The 20th edition of the London Cares Curb Hunger Food Drive has drawn to a close, but the amount of food received is the second lowest ever recorded.
The nine-day drive netted a total of 43,430lbs of food for the London Food Bank.
Glen Pearson, co-executive director of the food bank, says they don’t know what exactly caused the lower turnout, but speculates even weather may have played a role.
“A couple of the days were rainy, so we did notice that those numbers were down,” says Pearson.
The rollercoaster trend for giving isn’t uncommon, though, as the food drive’s history is marked with years in which donations were lower than expected and years in which Londoners were incredibly generous.
“During all of our drives we’ve had over 30 years, some are down and some are up,” Pearson says. “So next year it might go up again, we just don’t really know.”
Although donations were lower than expected, the amount of food collected is still appreciated by the food bank.
“Whatever the reasons were, it still got us over 40,000 pounds, which is what we really were hoping for,” says Pearson.
The amount of food donated also helped the Food Bank reach a huge milestone, bringing the total food weight past the 1,281,000 lbs mark.
“1.2 million is nothing to sneeze at, I mean, that’s a huge amount of food over the course of the last 20 years, and it still is a significant drive,” Pearson says.
The Food Bank is very glad to have the food that was acquired, with Pearson making it adamant that they truly “appreciate what the public did.”
**this story was written by Samuel Gallant. Samuel is a student in the Fanshawe College broadcast journalism program. He is performing a summer internship with Blackburn News.**
