Local celebrities spent Saturday "in the slammer" for a good cause.

They spent the day in "jail" at Okotoks MarketSquare's spring market and had to make bail by raising money for the Okotoks Food Bank.

Sheila Hughes, Executive Director of the Okotoks Food Bank, says the $17,665 raised will be a great help to the organization.

"A little bit of it has to go to infrastructure, we have had to lease an additional space so we can manage all of the food donations and the demand that we have. Also, we always find that summer is quite quiet for us as far as donations go. We are doing a new program this year called after the bell, it's helping bridge the gap when the school lunch programs aren't on."

Previously, the event was a two day affair but this year it was changed to one. The fundraiser will continue to be one day instead of two moving forward.

Hughes says the food bank does a great job at providing emergency food and is working on going that extra step further for the community through it's programming the funds will be supporting.

"We want to be more than a band-aid, we want to give people some skills, training, and help in other areas of their lives, all related to food of course. Probably going ahead we'll work on some budgeting, taking them on some grocery tours to see the best ways to shop for food, and that kind of thing."

She adds the community support was incredible and is thankful for all the volunteers who helped with the event.

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