I have always felt fortunate to live in the amazing community of St. Albert. What we have all lived through these past two years only reinforces that feeling to me!
The community support of the St. Albert Food Bank and Community Village has remained strong over this time, and we feel buoyed and motivated by that support.
Volunteers are essential to our organization and have been simply amazing these past couple of years. Although Volunteer Appreciation Week is celebrated in April, I want folks to understand that what they do for this community is year-round. Throughout the pandemic we have had volunteers arrive for their scheduled shifts no matter what to make sure our families received what they needed in food support.
Our wonderful drivers go out every day, in all weather conditions, to pick up donations and drop off items to our community partners. Once on site, every jar, package, or box that comes in as a donation is looked at by the volunteers who do the sorting, which is a job in and of itself. Every item is checked for container integrity, dates, and labels and then is put into boxes for storage in the warehouse.
We have volunteers dedicated to putting the hampers together according to the number of family members and their dietary needs. Just think, our volunteers touch, move, and pack over half a million pounds of food per year, which means that in 2021, more than 10,000 individuals were fed!
Volunteers are integral to our programs in other roles as well. Volunteers provide in-person or online support for career services and financial literacy. Others make sure the baby layettes are put together for the newest family members. We have trained volunteers who help families file their income taxes.
We have an amazing group (led by a professional chef) of volunteers who cook for our families. This team made a wonderful Christmas dinner for our families.
We have a couple of rock stars who make sure all the donations are organized and that our folks who are experiencing homelessness have all the items they need.
Again, we couldn’t do any of this without the community support we received.
Our annual food drive is such an outstanding example of community support — volunteers distribute bags which are filled by donors and then volunteers pick up those bags which are dropped off at the food bank.
I have the privilege of sitting at a number of community working tables where I see, first-hand, the level of commitment and care the social serving agencies provide to the families who need their support.
Working with such dedicated people whose focus is to help is indeed uplifting. Despite the many logistical and personal challenges related to working during the pandemic, there are many, many stories of success shared by our community partners.
We salute and thank all the volunteers who give so freely of their time and to all the community partner staff who continue to provide an outstanding level of support.
Suzan Krecsy is the director of the St. Albert Food Bank.
