A north Edmonton school has collected an impressive amount of food for the city’s less fortunate.
Killarney School staff and students have amassed 10,000 items during the school’s annual “We Scare Hunger” campaign and donated them to the Edmonton Food Bank.
The number is more than double the 4,000 items the school collected last year.
READ MORE: 10,000 pounds of potatoes harvested by Edmonton students, volunteers for food bank
“We really felt the need to give back to our community in different ways,” Grade 9 student Marwa Khazneh said.
“It’s nearing Christmas and a lot of families need food to help out and feed their families, so we just wanted to give back.”
Khazneh said Killarney students advertised the campaign and made it into a friendly competition among classes to see which one could gather the most items, which helped increase the large number of donations.
“This big mountain of food is absolutely something to be excited about and the students should be really, really proud of themselves,” Edmonton Food Bank spokesperson, Samantha Potkins, said.
The donation will help toward’s the Edmonton Food Bank’s goal of receiving 325,000 kilograms of food and $1.75 million for its Christmas campaign.
“The need is great. The year we had the fire we thought was probably one of the biggest ones, with the Fort McMurray fire, but the need continues to grow year-to-year,” Potkins said.
“Most definitely, Edmontonians are in need and we’re looking for the city to step up and help.”
READ MORE: Edmonton Food Bank dealing with a continued increase in demand
The food bank said it served 21,000 people this October, compared to 14,000 people served in October 2014.
There are hundreds of events happening around the city to collect food items.
Candy Cane Lane will start accepting donations for the food bank when it opens on Dec. 9, and the ETS Stuff-a-Bus event will take place on Dec. 2, at all Save-On-Foods in the city.