BY JOANNA DITTMER
Conestoga students came together on Oct. 31 to raise awareness and non-perishable food for the Conestoga Students Inc. food bank during Trick-or-Treating with a Meaning.
Taryn Schmidt, CSI’s food bank team leader, said this year’s food fundraiser was a great success.
“What we’re doing is taking students and asking them to go out into the community for some support, and they went around (Halloween night) and instead of getting candy they got some canned food for our food bank,” Schmidt said.
The idea behind the campaign came after Schmidt and her boss brainstormed ways to raise awareness and get more food into the food bank. They knew trick-or-treating for candy was coming up, so they started putting together ideas in September. Schmidt said they came up with the idea in a few minutes.
The students who went out collected approximately 900 items of food.
“We didn’t really have a goal because we didn’t really want to set one in case we didn’t make it … We were becoming very low on food in the food bank so we didn’t really want to set a goal just in case we didn’t hit that. But right now there is a lot more that came in today (Nov. 1) than I thought would come in, so we’re above what I thought we would do – by far,” Schmidt said.
Conestoga students are impressed with the amount of food collected and with the student involvement.
“I think it’s great that the school is doing something to help those less fortunate,” said Nick Robinson, a second-year woodworking technology student.
CSI is holding another food drive this week. They are urging students in different programs to compete against each other to bring in the most food.
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