By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle
Oliver’s community spirit shone brightly once again for the community’s 14th Annual BC Thanksgiving Food Drive with over 2,858 kg of food and more than $10,300 donated to the Oliver Food Bank.
Jordan Noftle, Oliver coordinator for the BC Thanksgiving Food Drive said donated food items that were collected on Saturday, Sept. 7 were “a little bit less than last year’s, but our financial donations are the highest we’ve ever had.” In fact, the cash is up nearly $2,000 over last year.
“So it’s fantastic, that’s a really nice thing because they can fill in the gaps as necessary,” he said in reference to the Food Bank being able to purchase particular items that may not come in as physical donations.
“We’re hoping to have a few more of those trickle in,” Noftle added noting that the online donations are still accepted until Sept. 21. “Hopefully people will continue to donate moving forward as well.”
Noftle agrees it’s an impressive thing given that many charities are struggling to pull in donations with the high cost of living taking a bite out of most people’s pockets, but yet he’s not particularly surprised.
“I’m very aware of the economic circumstances that so many individuals are living in unfortunately, but we also live in a fabulous community that continues to support this drive every year.
“This is the 14th year, and we’ve just seen so much growth over those years and continued love and support from the community for their neighbours. It’s amazing to me to see it. But does it surprise me anymore? It really doesn’t, because I’ve seen it time and time again, and it’s wonderful to see,” he observes.
“We’ve got several of the same businesses that have helped every year, and the same churches that have helped every year, and the Sikh temple collects for us every year and that’s a nice way to get a lot of the rural individuals.
“It really ends up being a community event, that’s what I love about it,” Noftle says.
He added that the volunteers who are at the food bank every week are “just so happy to see it.” Aside from the 15 to 17 regular food bank volunteers, this annual drive is made possible by a small community army – nearly 70 volunteers – who fan out across the town first leaving paper bags for donations and then a week or so later collecting the nearly three tonnes of food items, bringing it to the food bank building.
Noftle says his job is to make sure they have enough volunteers which come from schools, churches, businesses, community groups and even just individuals who want to lend a hand. He then draws up a map assigning people to different areas.
He describes the paper bags that are dropped off at doorsteps as “non-invasive” because people have a no-pressure choice whether to contribute or not and volunteers just quietly pick up the bags from doorsteps on the collection day.
The downside of course is that the volunteers are not able to drop paper donation bags at every household in Oliver, because some are in condos for instance. But after 14 years the event is so well known that many people just come down on collection day to drop off food or make a donation online.
