The 31st Annual Beamsville and District Lion Club Food Drive collected over 32,000 lbs of food and counting for Lincoln communities last Saturday.
New COVID-19 restrictions, presented challenges for the event, explained Lynda O’Donnell, fundraising coordinator at Community Care of West Niagara. “We were definitely nervous about how things would go since almost everything was different from the food drives we have done in past years. The venue, the physical set-up, the routes, and everything we needed to do to make sure our volunteers and community were kept safe during the event because of COVID-19,” she said.
O’Donnell worked alongside John Tutecky, Lion Food Drive Chair, to implement the changes to have a safe food drive for everyone involved. “Under John and Lynda’s amazing project management – it was, dare I say, in some ways, better than ever,” said Carole Fuhrer, Executive Direction of CCWN.
Volunteers also played a huge roll in the event. “Approximately 175 volunteers, including unloaders, sorters, runners, loaders, drivers, road crews and more helped make this possible,” said O’Donnell. “I want to thank the community, the volunteers, the staff at CCWN and of course the Lions for their support this year and every year,” she added.
The food was still being collected from several drop-off sites this week. After it is collected, the food will be shared with families in the Lincoln community.
CCWN is a registered non-profit organization in Lincoln that supports local families experiencing financial difficulties. It has been serving Lincoln since 1967. It is the only food bank in Lincoln that is a direct member of Feed Ontario and an associate member of Food Banks Canada.
More info:
Community Care of West Niagara website
Food drive CCWN page and Facebook event page
