18th Annual Canada Post food drive in Summerside benefits The Salvation Army

by Maritime
Categories: News Archive
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    One day while sitting over a cup of coffee, Miles Birch, a former Canada Post employee came up with the idea of a food drive in support of The Salvation Army. 18 years later, Miles’ idea is still going strong and this year raised over 22,000 pounds of food.

    While this is a Canada Post initiative, volunteers from all over Prince County chipped in from September 24th to 30th to make the food drive an overwhelming success. Marj Montgomery, Community and Family Services Coordinator for the area, has been involved since the start and continues to dedicate her time and hard work to such an important event. “It’s just an awesome project; I was blown away when I started working on it,” Montgomery says.

    “We rely strictly on donations, whether it’s monetary or food donations. This really is the major food drive of the year. Prince County is so good to The Salvation Army at any time of the year, but at this particular time of the year everybody comes together and works hard.”

    This was made possible by the dedication of postal workers in Summerside during the week. Not only were they delivering the mail, they were picking up food that was generously donated by the community. As you can imagine there is a great deal of sorting to be done when dealing with 22,000 pounds of food and thankfully over 25 community members volunteered their time to sort through the massive amount of donated food.

    The volunteers did not go home on an empty stomach, as The Salvation Army provided a homemade lunch of soup and chili for all of the volunteers. By 3 p.m. everything was sorted and put away in the food bank, marking the end of another successful food drive.

    “The food drive was a big success this year.” said Major Willis Drover, Summerside Corps Officer. “Our food supply was as low as it could go and we are seeing an increase in the number of people using the food bank and soup kitchen. Right now we are serving 50-70 people a day, five days a week, so it couldn’t have come at a better time.”

    Thank you Canada Post, all of the volunteers and everyone who donated to make this year’s food drive a success.