The Helping Hands Food Drive had a record-breaking number of donations on Saturday. More than 1,200 cases worth of food (and counting) was delivered to the Cochrane Alliance Church to be sorted and sent to the food bank. The amount collected was the most the organization has had for either of its biannual collections. “We had the most volunteers we’ve ever had, we had the most amount of food donated, which is awesome,” said Jackie Shier, executive director of Helping Hands. The last record was set back in the fall of 2016 with 1,100 cases of food. “The food bank is very crowded which is a great problem to have,” Shier said. The semi-annual food drives provide 60 per cent of all donations to the Activettes Food Bank. There was a 30 per cent increase of individuals accessing the food hamper program from 2015 to 2016. In 2017, 2,650 people utilized 997 food hampers. The Food Drive also saw 730 volunteers on the day of and leading up to the event - a huge upswing to the average 500 volunteers in previous years.
