The Save-On-Foods grocery store in 100 Mile House helped bring about many smiling faces on Tuesday, July 2, when store manager Fred Masales presented the local food bank with a novelty-sized cheque in the amount of $3,170.
A handful of volunteers from the 100 Mile House Food Bank Society stopped by Save-On to join the team for the presentation of funds.
Neil Driediger is the president of the Food Bank Society and was on hand to accept the funding Tuesday.
“Save-On’s great at helping the community,” said Driediger. He said that collaborations between Save-on and the food bank are ongoing.
Related: Safeway raises $3,000 for the local food bank
Masales said that the funds donated Tuesday were collected through a company-wide Share It Forward fundraiser, which took place for the second time this year at the local Save-On store. For a week in June, customers purchased Western Family Products, then Save-On-Foods donated 50 per cent of the net proceeds from those sales in each store to support local food banks in the community.
“The goal was to raise $300,000 company-wide,” explained Masales. “The memo to me was that we did make it. I think last time it was only a three-day deal, but this time it took place from June 13 to 19, over a week.”
“This is my first year here,” said Masales, who intends to increase Save-On’s involvement in the area now that he has taken over management of the store. “I’m one that loves to get out in the community and do things,” he said. “I’ve got a great bunch of assistant managers that want to get involved again.”
Masales is already impressed with his experience in 100 Mile House: “Super nice people. Great store to be in. It’s a fantastic community to be in. We did the Big Bike Ride here and had enough people from the store to jump on board and ride it twice.”
Danny Williams, Bernice Williams, and Celine Desaulniers are all volunteers at the food bank who stopped by Save-on-Foods on Tuesday to accept the funds for their society.
Read more: 100 Mile House Food Bank Society holds Pink Pig Barbecue raffle
“Today was a busy day,” said Desaulniers, noting that seven of the food bank’s volunteers were unable to show up Tuesday to help. Nonetheless, she was happy to be on hand for the receipt of funding, and called the donation “fantastic”.
“I think our food bank is really going to need this because of our mills closing, and Safeway’s gonna be closed for a while,” she added. “If you’ve got someone working at Safeway and someone working at the mill and they’re both on EI, you know, that’s a big drop in your income.”
Masales promised that the food bank will continue to receive support from Save-On. “We’re going to try to do as much as we can to get stuff to these guys,” he said, adding that the food bank is always low on food.
raven.nyman@100milefreepress.net
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