Friday December 13, 2019 ~ WEST SHORE & SOOKE
~ West Shore Voice News
SD62 high school students collected a record amount of items for local food banks this year under the banner of their 10,000 Tonight food drive.
Held at three high schools — Belmont Secondary in Langford, Royal Bay Secondary in Colwood, and EMCS in Sooke — students and their supporters of family and community gathered 43,880 items.
Sooke School District (SD62) is excited to say that “the initiative to feed the Western Communities as well as Sooke and Port Renfrew, was once again, a smashing success!”
The event took place on Wednesday evening, December 11. Volunteer student and parent drivers hit the streets, picking up non-perishable food donations, such as canned goods, pasta noodles and cookies.
This year, SD62 proudly had all three neighbourhood secondary schools working together for a collaborative total. In previous years the event was set up as a competition between the three high schools.
“We are very proud of the hard work our secondary schools put into this event,” says Scott Stinson, Superintendent of Schools. “Once again, students, staff and parent volunteers went above and beyond to ensure their friends and neighbours don’t go hungry this holiday season.”
The event was originally launched in 2009 at Belmont Secondary with the goal to collect 10,000 non-perishable food items in a single night. Since then, it has become one of the biggest food drives on the lower Island with all donations going to the Goldstream Food Bank and the Sooke Food Bank.