Decades-old tradition unites youth for community food drive

Steinbach churches are conducting their annual youth group food drive from Oct. 5-8 to support South East Helping Hands, the food bank located in Steinbach.

It is a decades-old tradition in which more than a dozen churches come together to raise donations for the food bank with hundreds of teenagers going door-to-door in Steinbach and Blumenort, delivering flyers and later collecting food donations.

Grace Mennonite Church co-pastor Kyle Penner said 14 churches are collaborating on the food drive.

“In the next six days, everybody in Steinbach and Blumenort should receive a little piece of paper hanging on their door telling them which church and which night of the week will be collecting the food,” Penner said.

Kali Loeppky, office manager at the food bank, said they rely a lot on the church’s food drive as it contributes to the majority of their donations every year.

“We don’t have anything as large as the youth church groups going around and picking up from houses. Anything we get from the food drive usually lasts until spring,” Loeppky said.

Last year the food drive raised about 21,000 pounds of donated food items. Penner urged people to donate healthy and non-perishable food items. He added that if somebody is not at home, they can leave the food outside their door.

“I would love it if we were able to collect at least as much food as we did last year,” he said.

Penner said he sees great participation among the youth every year.

“They love serving and walking around and seeing their town. They get very excited about it,” he said.

Penner said by helping people facing food insecurity, the church is teaching the youth that when we have extra food, our first posture should be to build a bigger table and not a bigger wall.

“We all work together to take the command of Jesus very seriously when he says you are to love your neighbour as yourself,” he said.

Penner said the food drive started as an event for kids in middle school, and now each church decides on what kind of group works best for them.This year will be Penner’s seventeenth year organizing the event.

“I imagine somewhere decades ago they (pastors) got together and said, let’s do this event to collect food, and it has been passed on for decades,” he said.

“Some churches head out as families. Other churches have just high school kids or middle school kids doing it,” Penner said.

Penner added that every year three big events, including the food drive, are organized where churches come together. The other two include a community pick-up and walk, where volunteers pick up trash, and a community worship service where churches hold a service together at the Southeast Event Centre.

“I like these events because even though each church understands their faith slightly differently, we are probably more similar than we think,” he said.