Killarney donates 3,000 pounds of food

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This article was published 09/11/2023 (1073 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In a tradition that has been going on for nearly two decades, youth with the Killarney Mennonite Church braved the snow and colder-than-usual conditions to go door to door for a food drive this Halloween night.

Around 40 volunteers with the Killarney Mennonite Church and the Lakeview Community Church, both in Killarney, located 99 kilometres southeast of Brandon, joined forces for the event, raising over 3,000 pounds of food.

The food drive was first devised as a way to engage the youth group of the Killarney Mennonite Church to build their community through volunteerism and charity as they grew out of the typical trick-or-treating age, said the church’s Pastor Danny Groening, who co-ordinates the event.

“We gave them sort of a Halloween event where it wasn’t about how much candy you can get, but instead, actually doing something to help and pay it forward with the food bank,” he said.

Since then, the event has grown over nearly 20 years into one that sees youth leaders, young people and adult volunteers all gathering on Halloween to pick up, drop off, sort, transport and fill shelves at the Killarney Food Bank.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the food drive looked a bit different, with community members encouraged to leave their bags or boxes of non-perishable food by their front doors or in another easily accessible area. Groening was happy to get back to normal this year.

Over the years, the community of Killarney has very generously taken part in the food drive, Groening said.

“The response year over year is tremendous,” he said. “We punch above our weight with generosity, which is such a great thing about the town of Killarney — it’s a generous town with generous people, and those who give, give a lot and generously.”

In past years, volunteers with the food drive have gathered around 4,000 pounds of food donations, Groening said. This year, the community gave 3,415 pounds.

“We’re really happy with that. It’s right sort of average with previous years,” he said. “The food bank was very pleased. The timing is always a boost, with heading into the winter and Christmas season.”

Groening has also been impressed with the spirit of volunteerism the youth of the community seem to have, and he hopes that it’s one that will prove contagious, leading to even bigger food drives in the coming years.

“You get to do a really great thing,” he said. “if you can learn that, and get a taste of that when you’re young, when you’re a teenager, that tends to have an affect on the rest of your life, and changes your attitude towards doing good.”

Marie Jensen, treasurer of the Killarney Food Bank, is extremely grateful for Groening and his volunteers for what they do every Halloween, which amounts to the biggest food drive for the food bank all year round.

“Danny is the real hero — he and his volunteers,” she said. “What is gathered on Halloween night will carry us through pretty much to late spring, depending on the need for most things, so it’s a major source of the food that we can distribute.”

The need in the community for the services the food bank offers keeps rising at a rapid rate, Jensen said. When she began helping with distribution six years ago, during the period of one week, 12 to 14 clients would use the food bank. Now, over 40 clients visit over a period of two weeks.

“It’s almost tripled in the last eight years, and in the last couple of years since the COVID-19 pandemic, it has risen,” she said. And even though summer is traditionally a time when people can get more seasonal work or grow their own food in gardens, which leads to food bank usage dropping, that didn’t prove true for this year, Jensen added. “This year, it didn’t matter. It just stayed steady, and even increased over the summer.”

Groening has seen the same thing in his role as pastor, with the demand for food banks increasing significantly due to greater economic pressure and inflation, he said.

“The need has never been greater.”

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