When Paige, Abby and Sydney Vrolyk started up their Snacks for Summer program in 2018 – a summertime initiative aimed at providing food for local kids who weren’t able to access their schools’ breakfast and snack programs during their two-month educational break – little did the sisters know the program would still be going strong five years later.
But on July 16, the trio were at it again, raising money to support the program, holding a bottle and can collection at St. Giles Presbyterian Church.
Even though Paige and Abby are now studying at post-secondary institutions outside of Sarnia, the St. Patrick’s High School alum said they are keen to keep their beloved program alive, to continue to support the people in the community they call home.
“I can’t believe this is our fifth year, but the program has been such a success that we wanted to keep it running,” Paige said. “It’s making a huge difference in the community and the food bank is so grateful.
“What we do is donate to the St. Vincent de Paul food bank,” she continued. “The Snacks for Summer program goes through from the end of June to the beginning of September and the purpose of the program is to alleviate and assist parents, because during the school year there are breakfast and snack programs in place but those go away during the summer.”
With the money they collect from fundraisers like the bottle drive, the sisters go grocery shopping to put the snack packs together.
“The food bank tells us which foods they prefer to have in the snack bags, but we don’t put anything in the snack bags that we wouldn’t eat ourselves,” Paige said. “We try and make sure that it’s very kid friendly and that it can be eaten by any age of student – whether you’re 18 or 8 – and we try and include as many healthy items as possible, lots of no-sugar-added snacks.
“We put together around 50 snack bags each week with 16 snacks in each bag,” she continued. “Inside the bag we have items like peanut butters, jams, we even do Cheese Whiz because the food bank said the calcium content in Cheese Whiz is good and it’s something they don’t have to put in the fridge.”
“We also get things like Ritz crackers, fruit cups or little snack packs too,” Sydney added.
Throughout the five years of the program, community support has been immense, Paige said. Contributions continue to flow in and the generosity of people never ceases to amaze the sisters.
COVID proved to be a major obstacle, but the sisters overcame that with a bit of ingenuity, Paige added.
“We had no idea what kind of success this program was going to be when we started it. We can’t believe it’s been five years now – we even navigated our way through COVID because of our fundraising efforts during our first few years,” she said.
“During COVID we had to run the program out of our basement – we couldn’t fundraise how we used to fundraise, so we came up with this bottle drive,” Paige continued. “Last year we were trying to figure out a no contact way of raising money rather than go and speak about this program. It was a success last year so we thought we’d do it again because people have all these empties they need to get rid of.”
With hundreds of more dollars collected thanks to the July 16 bottle drive, the sisters say they plan to continue the program well into the future.
“We’re trying to raise as much as we can – our program is continue this program for as long as we can,” Paige said. “One of the nicest things is that some people are just dropping by and giving us cash donations. It’s just amazing to see such generosity.”
For more information about the Snacks for Summer program, visit their Facebook page.