Above: CAA Niagara VP of Automotive Services, Bill Willard, presenting food donations and surprise cheque to Project SHARE.
Planned and executed in just one month, The Big Food Boost called for residents of Niagara to join CAA Niagara in its fight against hunger by dropping off donations at one of five club Branches between August 23rd-28th or registering online to have the donations picked up from their doorstep. On August 28th, volunteers traveled across the Niagara Region to collect non-perishables from more than 70 residences.
Donations collected in the Big Food Boost food drive benefitted food banks across Niagara: Community Care of St. Catharines & Thorold, Community Care of West Niagara, Community Outreach Program Erie (COPE), GBF Community Services, The Hope Centre, Port Cares, Newark Neighbours, Project SHARE of Niagara Falls and Village of Hope.
The final tally
The final tally for CAA Niagara’s community-wide food drive, dubbed The Big Food Boost, amounted to more than 3,000 pounds of non-perishable donations raised for local food banks.
“We feel so fortunate to have been able to help these important organizations in a big way,” said Peter Van Hezewyk, President and CEO of CAA Niagara. “Our club truly prides itself on supporting its local community, so when we saw that many local charities were continuing to face challenging times this year, bringing back Big Boost and launching The Big Food Boost were obvious decisions.
The Big Food Boost was our first-ever food drive of this magnitude and we saw fantastic participation and encouragement from our employees, our partners, CAA Members and the community—without them, none of this would have been possible.”
Providing a Big Boost to the community
The Big Food Boost is part of the club’s larger initiative, Big Boost, which was originally implemented in 2020 as a one-time funding program to provide support to essential Niagara-based charities that had been significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the 2020 program, $100,000 was donated between 18 non-profit organizations. But as many Niagara citizens and charities continued to face significant hardship through 2021, the club decided to revive the Big Boost for a second year, donating $106,000 across 15 organizations and hosting The Big Food Boost food drive.
Visit caaniagara.ca/bigfoodboost to read the full article. To learn more about CAA Niagara in the community, visit caaniagara.ca/community.
Ontario