In the spirit of the season, members of the Twin Centre Stars and Twin Centre Hericanes will be out Sunday collecting for local food banks. They’re hoping some of that same spirit will be reflected in donations from the community.
The young hockey players will be making the rounds of Wellesley and St. Clements during their contactless community food drive. The organizations are asking residents to have items on their porches by 10 a.m. on December 12.
Food collected will be divided among the Wellesley Food Cupboard, Wilmot Family Resource Centre and the Woolwich Community Services food bank.
This year’s outing is an expansion on a drive started last year due to the pandemic. Where Hericanes players previously gathered up food items along the route during the Santa Claus parades, last year’s cancellations forced them to do something different, says Claire Birrell, the registrar for the Hericanes.
“So we came up with a contactless food drive. We asked residents of Wellesley, St. Clements and Linwood to just leave their items out on their porch. We had families volunteer, and they were assigned streets and they just collected item – families just stuck together and then they just dropped it off. There’s no contact with anybody,” she said. “Then we split the food items, non-perishables, evenly between Wellesley, Woolwich and Wilmot.
Among the items most requested are diapers, baby wipes, baby wash, laundry detergent, rice, canned beans, canned vegetables, granola bars and juice boxes (100% juice only).
Cash donations can be made by etransfer at office@wellesleymennonite.ca, with donors asked to indicate “Wellesley Food Cupboard – hockey food drive” in the comments section. All cash will be directed to the Wellesley Food Cupboard, Birrell noted.
The contactless food drive will be carried on in future years, as well, she added.
“The idea was just to give back to the community. We found that with that option (contactless food drive), we actually was able to collect a lot more food items when we compared it to the parade. So now fast forward to this year, we’re still dealing with the pandemic, things are a little bit easier now, so we joined with the Twin Centre Stars,” said Birrell.
“This year, teams will actually be walking around and collecting those items – they’ll be wearing their jerseys, they’ll be wearing masks and collecting in the same manner.”
