It looks like fewer bags, but more food, were collected for the St. Vincent de Paul Society through this year’s Irish Miracle, an organizer says.
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The 40th annual food drive, held Dec. 2, saw about 450 students and volunteers canvass Sarnia for non-perishable food items, said Vanessa Borody, a St. Patrick’s secondary school teacher.
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“We collected 5,000 bags this year,” she said. That’s down from about 7,000 in 2022.
“However the amount of food was more, based on sorting and boxes going to SVDP,” she said by email.
Likely that’s because groups were using fewer bags, and putting more in them, Borody said. Boxes also were being used in place of bags, creating a wrinkle in the normal tabulation system.
Hopes are to use more reusable bags in future, she said.
“Regardless, we are delighted with the results,” Borody said. “There was so much food collected and Sarnia, as always, was incredibly generous. We cannot thank our canvassers, parents and volunteers enough. They made the miracle happen.”
The school tried to cover as many of its 111 routes as possible, she said. Borody recently said there were about 100 routes, but clarified that was a miscount.
“Our maps desperately need to be updated, which we will be doing this year,” she said. “Hopefully that means we can hit those new and expanding neighborhoods.”
Houses or streets that were missed can drop off donations at the high school, she said.
“Feedback (from the collection) was that people were very receptive and very giving and very excited to make sure that they were a part of it,” she said.
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