Halloween for Hunger helps Harvest

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Published on Sunday, November 27, 2016

By Lesley McFadden and Heather Gray

Submitted article

Students at Rivers Collegiate held their annual We Scare Hunger/Halloween for Harvest drive on a cool, rainy Oct. 31. While the weather was dreary and depressing, the response was warm and exciting. Once again, a new record amount of donations was collected — a whopping 1,000 pounds!

Grade 12 student Jordan Vander Velde organized and mapped routes for students to follow. Oak River students worked the streets of their community and a group of young men from Grade 12 assembled donations from Chimo Resort area. When Rivers Elementary School was unable to do their part of the collection, four students from Grades 9 and 10 quickly volunteered to make sure all streets in Rivers were covered. All of the student volunteers responded with energy and enthusiasm, and were impressed not only with the volume of the collection, but  the sincere kindness of the supporters of the Halloween for Harvest campaign.

Much credit must be given to Jordan, her sister Jaimee Waldner for helping to supervise, Kaysi Dziver for designing the posters, Mac Dawson for placing posters downtown and Riverdale Grain for allowing the school to weigh the truck after the collection. We also recognize all students who sacrificed their time of collecting Halloween goodies for themselves in order to give something more substantial and valuable for others.

Two Grade 12 students, namely Orianna Hyndman and Emma Gray, stayed behind to help Riverdale Harvest members sort and put away all the food. This was a tremendous help to the Harvest ladies because more than 1,000 pounds of food is a lot to organize in our space in the basement of Zion Church. Just a friendly reminder that when donating to the food bank, please check expiry dates. We are always grateful for all donations and we certainly appreciate all the hard work of collegiate students and those who donated!