Lethbridge food banks are looking for volunteers for the annual Target Hunger food drive. This year, the Lethbridge Food Bank and the Interfaith Food Bank are aiming for a combined 50,000 pounds in food donations during the initiative in June.
Volunteers are needed to deliver food donation banks to homes, then collect them again on June 10. Executive director of the Lethbridge Food Bank Mac Nichol says there are about 160 routes around the city that need volunteers for the initiative.
“It’s hard to fill a lot of those roles and sometimes the food banks at the end of the day have to go and pick up our own routes and that is quite a big draw on our resources so we really hope to find enough volunteers,” he says.
In previous years, the target has been set at 100,000 pounds of food, but Nichol says that goal was a challenge to reach. “Last year we moved it to 50,000 and our community kind of blew it out of the water. We got about 60,000 pounds of food so this year we have decided to keep it with 50,000—we know it’s a bit tougher for a lot of people to donate so we wanted to keep that goal attainable,” he says.
The most in-demand items for this time of year are non-perishables such as cans of soup, pasta and sauce and canned fruits and vegetables, Nichol says. With increased demand at food banks this year, he adds the food drive is particularly important. He says he sees about 100 more families each month using the food bank when compared to last year.
“One thing that our community does is really support our foodbank but they usually support them more in the last two months of the year,” he says. “When we get to this end of the year and with June, our food bank really finds that our warehouse is quite depleted and we are getting to the point where we are needing to go out and buy more food and try and support our clients so having a fundraiser that is this big in June really helps us to stock those shelves so that we can make it out through the rest of the year.”
In addition to volunteers to deliver, both food banks will need people to help sort food on pickup day. Volunteers can begin signing up on May 1 at TargetHungerLethbridge.ca.