With volunteers stationed at grocery stores throughout Chatham-Kent, the community showed strong support for the Fill the Bus campaign on Saturday.
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The Helping Hands initiative, in its fifth year, collected food donations at locations including Chatham Sobeys, Real Canadian Super Store, Giant Tiger, Food Basics, Dollar Tree and No Frills.
Other spots included Wallaceburg No Frills and Dollar Tree, Tilbury No Frills, Blenheim Sobeys, Ridgetown Foodland and North Dresden Baptist Church.
Tim Haskell, one of the organizers, was impressed with the response, adding that in Chatham alone, five skids of food were collected, along with $600. Items were still being tallied for the outlying communities.
“It went awesome,” he said Sunday. “I love it. Anytime you go out there to try to ask for something, they’re always there, the community. They never let you down.”
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All donations will stay in the community to assist local food banks.
Several stores didn’t have a bus on site, however, collections still took place.
Helping Hands is made up of volunteers from various community groups: Giving Hearts, Chatham Goodfellows, Salvation Army Chatham-Kent, FreeHelpCk, Ridgetown LaSertoma, Reach Out Chatham-Kent, Chatham-Kent Caring Citizens, Chatham Outreach for Hunger, Tilbury Help Centre, Salvation Army Blenheim and North Dresden Baptist Church.
Haskell said the collaboration helps provide strength in numbers for large community efforts.
“Many hands make light work,” he said. “It slowly grew and grew to different parts of Chatham-Kent.
“We appreciate all the giving and we appreciate all the buses and the stores for allowing us to do that … It’s awesome that we can get together like this, and have one day where you give back to the food banks and bring awareness to them. ”
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