One summer party looks set to help feed hundreds of families for multiple months in Bradford.
With the funds from the third-annual Summerlyn Retro Street Party in August, the local Street Party Collective donated multiple pallets containing slightly more than $9,000 worth of food from Reali’s No Frills as well as $1,000 to help purchase dairy products to the Helping Hand Food Bank on Friday afternoon, Oct. 18.
Some of the items donated included tuna, beans, peanut-free granola, peanut butter, tomatoes, soups, pasta sauces, and a whole skid of crackers.
“This year, instead of doing one or two items, we tried to give them a full spectrum,” chairman of the Street Party Collective and Ward 4 Coun. Joseph Giordano said.
Even members of rival soccer clubs Bradford Wolves and Bradford United showed up to help unload and sort — all part of the “team effort,” that surrounds the annual party, according to Giordano.
“What makes my heart so full is that the sponsors that are involved, the people who help out and the cause all work together to create an amazing experience both for the street party and after the street party,” he said. “The love keeps going.”
Carolyn Khan, executive director of the food bank, said she was just as excited for the donation this year as she was last year.
“It just makes me so grateful that the community was able to come together and donate this massive amount of food,” she said.
The food bank typically sees the highest demand during November and December each year, meaning the contribution comes at the “perfect timing.”
Still, Khan estimated the “mountain” of food donated will only last about two months, not only as items in high demand are expected to “fly off the shelves,” but also because demand continues to grow and the food bank is currently serving about 430 families as of the end of September, an increase of almost 11 per cent over the previous month.
At the end of the street party in August, Giordano estimated they would have roughly $9,000 to donate, but after the team crunched the numbers, the total turned out to be closer to $10,000.
Peter Reali of the local No Frills helped top off the amount and source the food at lower prices; Giordano estimated that actually resulted in almost $11,000 worth of food being donated.
When it comes to the collective’s goal for next year, Giordano said they’re aiming for “bigger and better.”
He also said the collective and the party couldn’t have done so well this year, if it hadn’t succeeded last year, and that couldn’t have happened without the help of Flavio Digiovanni of Master Appliance.
Local schools have also been supporting the food bank recently, with donations from Harvest Hills Public, Fieldcrest Elementary, and St. Marie of the Incarnation, St. Angela Merici and St. Charles Cathoilc schools.
Khan said everyone at the food bank has been “blown away” by the support and are so grateful to everyone who helped.
“A giant thank you to the whole community,” she said. “Thanksgiving this year has given us an increase in donations that we really needed at this time.”
Now, the task of organizing all those donations falls to Grace Wittig, operations coordinator at the food bank, and her trusted group of volunteers.
In order to keep up, she said they’ve started organizing more sorting teams, who work in parallel and simultaneously to the volunteer teams on the market side.
More information about Helping Hand and how it’s been serving the community since 1991 can be found at bradfordfoodbank.ca.
