Over 50,000 pounds of food collected in ‘Target Hunger’

WATCH: Those yellow, plastic bags that dotted every porch in the city were filled with goods on Saturday as food banks in Lethbridge executed their biggest food drive of the year. Blake Lough has more on this year’s ‘target hunger’ campaign and how it has replenished empty food bank shelves.

Hundreds of yellow plastic bags, carrying thousands of pounds of non-perishable foods, were collected over the weekend for the annual Target Hunger food drive.

Lara Hall and her four young children have been helping to collect for Target Hunger for four years, covering a south-east section of the city in their SUV, the kids eagerly running up to every porch on every street.

For a week, empty yellow bags were placed on every porch in the city. Over the weekend, they were collected by volunteers and transported to both Lethbridge food banks where the food was weighed and sorted.

“Pasta, pasta sauce, beans, soup, Kraft dinner, cereal… Once they’re sorted into a box they put them onto pallets and the pallets are put in the warehouse,” said Debbie Woelders, Executive Director at the Lethbridge Food Bank.

Target Hunger is the biggest operation of the year for Lethbridge food banks. According to officials, donations and supplies deplete quickly in the spring and fall seasons.

“I’ve been having no choice but to purchase foods to fill our hampers,” said Woelders. “We’ve been definitely short on donations. This is the time of year that we need a food drive.”

At the end of the day, 50,000 pounds of food had been collected and sorted, though that number is expected to grow as donations dropped off at grocery stores continue to be counted.