One of the Okotoks Food Bank's biggest annual events happened over the weekend, and Okotokians didn't disappoint.

It was the Community Food Drive, where volunteers leave bags at local houses with residents asked to fill them up with food donations which are later picked up by volunteers.

Their early calculation for the total amount of food donated this year comes in at 31,220 pounds.

It should be noted, however, that with some inevitable missed houses and donations trickling in from other sources, the real total is likely higher.

They also took in $1,050 in monetary donations.

It's a notable increase from last year's total of over 26,000 pounds.

The event is largely driven by volunteers from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, who are involved in distributing bags, picking them back up, transporting them, and sorting them.

Executive Director Pamela McLean had high hopes for speed and efficiency for this year's event, though new COVID restrictions threw a wrench in the works.

"With the rise in COVID-19 numbers, we very quickly had to change plans, so my dream number of 40 had to be whittled down to about 12 inside the facility. We had about 10 volunteers outside because it was a bit of a drive-thru operation this year."

Luckily, they were able to quickly adapt.

"Fortunately, we had last year's event to learn from, so we were much better at directing traffic and making sure we had enough people in the parking lot so that it went smoothly. And of course, this year we had our beautiful big delivery truck to block off one path of access where we didn't want people to drive."

For McLean, the LDS church's hard work can't be stressed enough.

"The amount of work and organization that the church puts in, just phenomenal. We'll be forever grateful. It's a very difficult task to orchestrate. The fact that they've taken on the big chunk of it, I will be forever grateful."

"We couldn't do what we do without their help, and to see that they're supporting us one thousand per cent, it just gives us that motivation to not give in to the fourth wave despair. We will get out of this together. The example they're presenting us with gives us the strength to continue and to be as good as we possibly can be in delivering our services."

 

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