“We made it!” That statement was my response to a colleague asking me to share a highlight of 2024. It was a challenging year for all of us at the St. Albert Food Bank and Community Village — staff, volunteers and, importantly, the families we serve.
How did we make it? We made it because of the dedication of our staff, volunteers and the tremendous support from this community!
I want to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to the 125+ volunteers who are the foundation of our operations. To those that are here every day (literally through rain, snow, sleet and hail!), driving to pick up from the grocery stores or other locations where folks have done a food drive for us. To those who sort through each and every can, package, bottle or bag that comes through our doors to ensure it meets food safety measures. To the amazing teams of volunteers who carefully and thoughtfully build approximately 600 hampers each month. With their help we can build hampers with items families require.
We have an exceptional group of volunteers who come in to work in the kitchen – they are such a dedicated group who put together some beautiful meals for our clients and families.
To the folks who facilitate the Financial Literacy workshops, we thank you for providing the participants with some life skills they may not have possessed before.
We have a dynamic little team of organizers who keep the warehouse neat and tidy for us. They put together comfort kits for the folks that need them and do it in such a respectful way, and very importantly they keep the warehouse (non food items) in order.
We thank the volunteers who help us with our data entry and who provide support in career counselling. We are incredibly fortunate to have this team of folks who come in here every day of the week to help us help the families we serve.
Outside of our usual volunteer roles, we receive assistance with our Annual Food Drive where hundreds of volunteers deliver the paper bags, pick them up after they are filled and then help get the food into the warehouse, and the response from the schools and other businesses at Christmas is second to none.
I couldn’t go any further without thanking our volunteer Board of Directors – their support to this organization is simply outstanding.
Lastly, a huge thanks goes out to the St. Albert Rotary Club, who came in to help send out over 400 Christmas hampers in one day; a pretty amazing thing to watch everyone come together to help our community.
I know we are facing what could be another challenging year with the affordability crisis not yet resolved but the staff are ready to take it on because we know we have the support we need to get the job done.
Thank you St. Albert, I hope you all know how amazing you really are.
