Comments Off on 10 years of family food drives
Passing the torch on the family food drive
Ten years ago, Berry Meyerowitz launched a community food drive with his family around Halloween with the tagline: We Scare Hunger.
“My family and I are very fortunate. I’ve always wanted the kids to understand how lucky they are, and that we need to volunteer and help other people who are in need,” Berry says.
This has since grown to become one of the longest-running food drives in North York Harvest’s history!
For a decade this family initiative has been collecting essential food to support nearly 30,000 individuals and families who rely on North York Harvest Food Bank. Each of Berry’s children have taken turns leading the family food drive: They plan out the routes in their neighbourhood and recruit friends at school to help deliver flyers and collect food donations.
Passing the torch
With three of his children now in university, the torch was finally passed to his youngest daughter, Jordy, this year.
“I learned a lot from our past food drives, and especially over the past two years when my sister spearheaded the food drive at our school,” Jordy says.
This year Jordy recruited an astonishing 50 students from Havergal College to help run the food drive.
“The response from students who volunteered to help was incredible, which made it a lot more fun as we were one big team!” she says.
In the earlier years, about 500 homes would be targeted for donations, yielding about 2,000 lbs of food. But this year Jordy and her team contacted 2,000 homes, collecting 5,350 lbs for our community!
“I want this initiative to spread to other communities, where people who see this think ‘wow this is so easy to achieve!’ And do it in their own neighbourhoods – we could take this grassroots initiative all over the city!” Berry says.
Thank you to the Meyerowitz family and all the students at Havergal college who have helped to bring this beautiful community initiative to life year after year! Your hard work and compassion makes a real difference.
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