The Thanksgiving Food Drive in Quesnel netted around 5,600 pounds of food this year.
Russell Higdon is the Chair of the Committee behind the annual event.
“Another successful Thanksgiving Food Drive was had by all here. We had a really good turnout by our volunteers, and the community as always, contributing what they can to help those in need in our community, so really grateful for everybody that participated.”
Higdon says they delivered to 36 routes in total and 16 percent of the bags were returned with donations.
That is down from 22.3 percent last year however.
Higdon says this year’s total was also down from 7,670 pounds last year.
“I think this was the first year in probably 4 or 5, maybe more years, that it was actually raining, so I think that poor weather kind of keeps people indoors and maybe they just don’t kind of go to their porches and get reminded to fill that bag and get it out in the morning. And even a couple of days leading up to it I don’t think we had the best weather so I think that kind of played a role.”
Higdon says inflation also likely played a roll.
“People are probably still feeling the impact of that and how much the cost of food has gone up, so that probably plays a little bit of a factor in just maybe the volume of food that people were putting in the bags.”
Higdon says people can still donate up until the end of the month.
“We include the food that is delivered to the food bank, the Nourish Food Bank, as well as hampers at the grocery stores like Save On Foods and Safeway, and then we would include that in our totals so there is still more to account for.”
Higdon says people can also donate to the food bank any time of the year.
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