An image from the 2020 Target Hunger event (Photo courtesy Maral Kiani Tari)

By Justin Goulet

Target Hunger collects roughly 17,000 pounds of food for local food banks

Jun 16, 2020 | 10:39 AM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – It wasn’t necessarily a tally organizers were hoping for, but this weekend’s Target Hunger in Lethbridge was an overall success.

Maral Kiani Tari, executive director of the Lethbridge Food Bank (LFB) said the community event on Saturday, June 13 collected around 17,000 pounds of food donations for both the LFB and the Interfaith Food Bank. She added that donations continue to roll in.

“We do have bins across the city in local grocery stores…we are [also] getting a lot of individuals that are still dropping off Target Hunger donations [at the food banks], so that number is subject to change when we do all of our pick-ups and [we will] be able to kind of do an exact total, but roughly we’re sitting at about 17,000 pounds of food,” she told Lethbridge News Now.

The goal of Target Hunger has always been to collect 100,000 pounds of food. Last year’s event saw 42,000 pounds collected.

Kiani Tari acknowledged the lower amount for this year, but said organizers weren’t too surprised, attributing the lower number to the COVID-19 pandemic and changes made to the campaign this year.

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One of the major differences for this year from years past was the phasing out of the Target Hunger yellow bags.

“We’ve always had yellow bags that had the Target Hunger information printed on them, and we had volunteers that would sign up for routes. The volunteers would have to come and pick up bags according to the number of houses that [were] in their route and they would drop off those bags a week prior to the event itself to every house,” Kiani Tari explained.

“Every house would receive those yellow bags, and it was a reminder to put food inside of them, [and] place them outside their door on the second Saturday in June [the event day] and then the same volunteer would go and pick up the food that’s placed outside of the houses and bring them to the local food banks.”

This year, anyone who wanted to donate food placed their items in their own boxes or bags.

Kiani Tari noted that the decision to phase out the yellow bags was made in an effort to reduce the usage of single-use plastics and was decided on before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

“We also know that the community really did rally behind us since March – they have supported the two local food banks. So, that could have also been a factor, where the community has already done their donation, so target Hunger wasn’t something they partook in,” Kiani Tari added.

She did note, however, that both local food banks have yellow bags left from previous years and will give them out while supplies last.

The plan is to then completely get rid of the yellow bags for Target Hunger events going forward.

COMMUNITY SUPPORT

Although this year’s collection did not reach the 100,000 pounds mark, Kiani Tari said organizers are still very grateful to residents for their support.

“Even though the pounds were lower, we’re still really grateful for all who donated, every single volunteer that signed up to pick up the food donations, as well as all the volunteers that came to both local food banks to help receive those donations and place them inside the food bank,” she said.

“We’re really grateful for the community to step up and help during this tough situation [the COVID-19 pandemic]. For those who kind of forgot, or don’t know what Target Hunger is or still would like to continue supporting us, we have bins at every local grocery store for this week, so people can drop off their donations there.”

Additionally, anyone who wants to donate towards Target Hunger can still do so at both the Lethbridge Food Bank and Interfaith Food Bank this week.

Financial donations can also be made via the Target Hunger website.