By Tom Mark

Food Bank Appeal A Huge Success

Sep 5, 2017 | 12:21 PM

The Vernon Branch of the Salvation Army has had a huge response to its emergency call for supplies over the last couple of weeks.

Lieutenant Stefan Reid says monetary donations were also strong.

“We actually had one anonymous person give five thousand dollars to help us for the rest of the year and we also had thousands of pounds of food come in.”

Reid says this will keep the food bank going over the next month or so.

Two more food drives are planned to keep the shelves stocked through to the end of the year.

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“One in a couple of weeks, the BC Thanksgiving food drive that’s happening on September 16th and then we have our big realtor food drive that’s happening in December and then that will get us well into next year.”

A lot of donations that came in over the last couple of months were designated for wildfire victims and the shelves at the Vernon bank were low.

But the need has been great.

“At this point last year we helped about a thousand families to this point in the year and this year we’re actually up to 1400. So we’ve seen an influx of 400 families that we’ve helped more than we did last year.”

Stefan Reid says it’s hard to judge how things change from summer to fall, but the start of school always adds more.

“The fall, kids going back to school, that’s when we see an influx of smaller families coming in with smaller children wanting to make sure they get good food for school.”

Donations can always been dropped off at the House of Hope downtown.

by Tom Mark