Ecole TM Robert’s Youth Care Worker, Mrs. Lori Garson, put out a call to TM Robert’s students to fill the shelves of the Cranbrook Food Bank beginning on January 6th.
Every week, Mrs. Garson would collect food with the help of grade 4/5 students from Mrs. Gauthier and Mrs. Reinarz’s class.
After only five days of the food drive, over 1,000 lbs of food was collected and the school reached out to Ted Murrell at Save-On Foods to borrow shopping carts to store the food.
When Save-On Foods learned of the challenge put out to classrooms, they donated a gift basket that could be used as a prize to help raise more money.
The front foyer of the school was getting full and the space was needed for Kindergarten registration, so the Cranbrook Food Bank came to pick up the first load.
The students didn’t stop there, they continued to bring in donations until February 5th and the final total of food donated was 1,383 kg. / 3,050 lbs. / 1.52 tonnes of food!
Garson is overwhelmed by the generosity of the families of TM Roberts.
“Every day of food collection was exciting. There were cases of soup, juices, noodles, rice — the list goes on,” she said. “My heart is full! Thank you, TM, for your awesomeness; thank you Save On Foods for your generosity. All of your kindness will be felt by many in the community.”
Grade 5 student, Aleaya McKenkie helped Mrs. Garson collect the food from classrooms. “I liked seeing all the food collected and how it kept going and made people feel happy,” she said. “I liked giving back to the community.”
TMRES Parent Advisory committee is buying dilly bars from Dairy Queen for all the students as a thank you.
Mrs. Garson’s next project to continue “TM’s Kindness in the Community” is a raffle for the basket that was donated by Save-On Foods. 100% of the proceeds of the raffle will be donated to the Women’s Shelter.