Cyclone Aid food drive set to blow through Sarnia Saturday

Student organizers with this Saturday’s Cyclone Aid food drive in Sarnia drummed up interest among potential student volunteers during lunch at the beginning of the week at St. Patrick’s Catholic high school.

They ran a live version of the TV show Price is Right, along with a canned-food sculpture-building contest and a blind taste test in the school cafeteria while other volunteers at a table in the hallway signed up volunteers for Saturday’s food drive.

The drive, known as Cyclone Aid, is one of two community-wide food drives the high school holds each year in Sarnia.

The Irish Miracle canvasses city neighborhoods before Christmas to collect non-perishable food donations for the community and Cyclone Aid is held each year before Easter.

Teacher Madeleine Dubois, who was helping members of the Cyclone Aid student committee run the contests, said canvassers will be out across Sarnia on Saturday from 9 am to noon collecting donations of food for the Inn of the Good Shepherd food bank.

“The easiest way, definitely, is to leave your donation on the porch and canvassers can just run and grab them,” she said.

Students and other volunteers will be in teams with adult drivers collecting donations to bring back to the high school and sort before they’re delivered to the Inn. Once the work is finished at the school, there will be a hot dog lunch for the volunteers, Dubois said.

The Easter season food drive was launched in 2002 as a project by the former St. Christopher’s high school and continued after that school was combined with St. Pat’s.

This will be its first return to a communitywide Cyclone Aid collection following pandemic restrictions.

Last year, the school adapted the event to pandemic restrictions by setting up drop-off locations around the city and collected 1.649 kilograms of food, as well as cash donations.

That total was a sharp drop from the 11,000 kg typically collected before the pandemic.

Teacher Vanessa Borody said preparations for this year’s event have been coming together.

“Often times we just need to get the students’ attention,” she said about the lunch-time games event.

“We have some prizes for them to win and some silly contests” to encourage them to volunteer.

“The kids are so touched and so moved by it every year,” Borody said about the food drive.

“I think it’s so much of being part of St. Pat’s Irish that once they do it, I think it cements their place here,” she said. “It is very much apart from who we are.”

Maggie Hamel, a Grade 10 student who was helping out with the games, said she has been encouraged often to find a way to get involved at school and “I like the idea of ​​food drives and things like that.”

Borody said the recent Irish Miracle food drive was so successful organizers are hopeful the results from this year’s Cyclone Aid will return to levels back before the event was interrupted by the pandemic.

“Anything more than that would be the icing on the cake because we know the need is actually more than it has been in the past,” she said.

The Inn of the Good Shepherd said recently about 2,000 people use its food bank each month.

The recent Irish Miracle attracted 500 volunteers and allowed it to “hit every route” in the city, Borody said.

Cyclone Aid has been opened up to elementary schools that send pupils on to St. Pat’s, as well as any local families or others who would like to volunteer and be part of the food drive, she said.

“All they have to do is contact the school and ask for me,” Borody said.

“We would love any extra people to come help.”

The school’s office can be reached at 519-332-3976.

“We know we’re asking a lot,” canvassing for donations again so soon following the Christmas season food drive, Borody said.

“Sarnia has always been so unbelievably generous. I’m just saying ‘thank you’ ahead of time for their patience with us.”

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