Tofield Mercury raises more than $1K for Food Bank

This year, the Tofield Mercury raised $1,435 through its annual ‘Time to Fill the Tree’ program, which allows community members to donate and have their names acknowledged in the final edition of the year. All proceeds go to the Tofield, Ryley, and Area Food Bank.

The Food Bank has been an established part of the community since 1994. It continues to help more than 800 people from the community each year. “We will often go through what is on our shelves and see what we have a lack of,” said Treva Piekema, a volunteer. “If we have an excess amount of a specific item we will usually exclude it from the list of things we ask for.”

The Food Bank is often short on canned vegetables and canned fruit. “Canned vegetables that are not corn are always in demand,” added Piekema. “We always receive more corn than any other canned vegetables. We like a little more variety in our hampers.”

The Food Bank encourages more people to donate larger volumes of rice, flour, and rolled oats. Those items are often divided into family sized portions.

“The Food Bank supplies toilet paper with the hampers they hand out,” said Lorna Odland, another volunteer. “However, it is an item that is rarely donated, so we often have to go out and buy it.”

The volunteers use a standard checklist and the food that is readily available on the shelves to build the hampers as equally as possible. The only time a hamper may be different is due to quantity based on family size. . . . contd.