Can-2020 a Success
Liz Courtney
Over the last fortnight Papanui Rotary Club members have been collecting food cans for the Salvation Army Foodbank. After talking with the Salvation Army they had been inundated with people desperate for food after losing jobs.
Under the COVID-19 rules we needed to come up with a simple and contactless plan to collect from the public.
Deryn Tregurtha, who usually runs our trailer raffle, came up with the idea for people to leave a can by their letterbox on a designated day and time to suit the Rotarian collecting them and to keep the project a quick and simple thing to achieve, by asking each Rotarian to collect in their own street or nearby.
When completed the cans were then dropped off at a single collection point, to keep contact to a minimum, and then we arranged to deliver them to the Salvation Army Food depot.
Paul, who manages the Salvation Army Food Depot, helped us repack the bags and boxes onto pallets on the forklift. Like us they were overwhelmed by the huge amount we collected and extremely thankful.
Within a 2 week period we collected just over 1500 cans and numerous packets of dried food, sauces and the occasional bars of chocolate! In the end we needed a trailer to deliver them to the food depot and Courtney Architects office frontage now doesn’t look like a food store.
A very satisfying project under lockdown as it involved all the members giving everyone a sense of doing something good and necessary for our Christchurch community.
What a great result.