Come and Be a Part of the NDG Food Drive This Saturday

This coming Saturday, November 30th is the NDG Food Depot’s Annual Door-to-Door Food Drive. St. Philip’s is once again taking a leading role by offering the Food Depot our space and our “hands” for this important community event. Anyone interested in helping out is welcome. Please see Mark R. on Saturday morning if you do not have an assigned role and are willing to help.

Driver/pick-up teams

If you have signed up as a driver/pick-up team (or are interested in forming a team or joining one), please be at SPC no later than 09h00 on the 30th. Teams will organize themselves and then head over to Loyola High School (for around 9:15) to pick up their driving routes/instructions and start collecting.

Other volunteers

All other volunteers should be @ SPC by 09h30 to prepare to receive/sort/store the hundreds of bags of food that will arrive. If you have access to a packing tape dispenser, please bring it as it will help to speed up assembling and closing boxes.

Orientation

An NDG Food Depot board representative will provide a short orientation on the sorting process once everyone has arrived.

Parking

If you are driving to SPC on Saturday morning but are not part of a pick-up team, please park your car either in the parking lot of the International School (i.e. the small parking lot on Connaught right across from our Hall) or on Brock Avenue. We would like to reserve the area closest to the Hall on Connaught and in front of the Hall on Sherbrooke Street as a “drop-off” area for pick-up teams bringing in their grocery bags.

Directing Traffic into the Church

All grocery bags will be brought into the Hall through the Sherbrooke Street entrance. James Doucet will be at the Sherbrooke door to direct people down the stairs to the basement of the Hall (using the right-hand stairway) and to come upstairs using the left-hand stairway. The Connaught door (next to the kitchen) should not be used. We will need someone to direct “grocery” traffic away from the Connaught door and over to the Sherbrooke door.

Church Basement

Once downstairs, there will be a drop-off station set up to receive grocery bags. Those persons dropping off the bags should then immediately exit via the opposite stairway. We have four grocery carts (kindly donated by IGA many years ago!) that will be used to transport the grocery bags from the receiving station to the back of the lower Hall.

Sorting

This is where we need the most help as the grocery bags will come quickly and in great numbers. Once transported to the back of the basement, there will be tables set up for sorting and packing the food into boxes. Once we start to receive groceries, the fun of sorting and packing begins. Filled boxes of canned goods will be put in the Gladwin Room for long-term storage. Boxes of non-canned goods (e.g. pasta, cereal, rice, flour, sugar, etc.) will be stacked along a wall to be taken to another location later in the afternoon.A hospitality area (serving coffee, doughnuts, soda, water, pizza and just a place to sit and take a break) will be running in the upper Hall (main floor). All workers are encouraged to take breaks as it will be a hectic day.

Wear Red

The NDG Food Depot is asking everyone participating in this year's event to please wear an article of RED clothing, identifying them self as a food drive volunteer.

Invite your Friends to Help!

Please call or e-mail the church if you have any questions. If you know of others who may want to help out, please encourage them to come. Thanks in advance for your support and we look forward to seeing you on Saturday when we expect a day of fun, fellowship, and outreach to our community.