This week @ Pickering Cares

Well, today we and our Food Bank partners met with Mayor Ryan. It seems this meeting is the formal kickoff for the Pickering Cares project each year. He again was a great encouragement and signed up to be one of our volunteers on May 14th for the food collection.

We continue to sign up community partners with 3 churches now on board for this year and 3 in process. So, we are well under way. We will be providing the email for individual volunteers to connect with us. (We do provide volunteer hours records for High School students.)

Here is a photo of our food intake station at last year's event.

This Week @ Pickering Cares

    So far this week we have had another church commit to partnering with us. And tomorrow I meet with another. Our goal is to have at least 6 of the 20 or so churches in Pickering on board. Many hands will make light work.

    Our next area to invest in will be to attract some local sponsorship. It takes about $4,000 to do this size of project. Last year some individuals who felt led of the Lord to encourage this endeavour, covered all of our costs. This year, we are trusting God that the business community will contribute as well as individuals.

    I look forward to reporting again in a week.



   Fred

This Week @ Pickering Cares

We are ramping up for 2011 Pickering Cares. We accomplished some important things so far. Here is a quick summary.

1. The Pickering Firefighters are back on board as a place where those who can't put there food our on May 14th, can drop it off instead.

2. Pickering Pentecostal Church is back and promising to have a bigger team.

3. We are meeting with the Mayor of Pickering March 29th to line up the city's support and electronic signs. (Also to re-sign Mayor Ryan as a volunteer.)

Keep posted for our progress as we approach our May campaign.

Our 2011 Goals

     Last year we started Pickering Cares. We sensed a real need in the community for a major food drive at a non-traditional time. There tends to be strong focus on food banks at Thanksgiving and Christmas. We felt, and had confirmed to us by the food banks, that stocking up for the needs of families in the summer was just as important.
    With the help of almost everyone at Amberlea Church as well as St. Pauls - on - the - Hill Anglican,  Pickering  Pentecostal,  Bayfair Baptist, Hope Community Church, our Scouting and Guide troop and a bunch of other volunteers including the Mayor of Pickering, we were able to accomplish a major door to door food drive covering a major portion of Pickering. Over 5 tons of food were collected.
    This year, we hope to cover all of urban Pickering. This means we will need more partners and more volunteers. It is an important initiative and our goal is to communicate it well. Please help us spread the word. We will have our volunteer desk in operation later this month. Please set aside the two important dates: May 7th and May 14th as we will be distributing almost 20,000 door knocker type flyers and going back to pick up, hopefully, 10 tons of food.
   The two major food banks that service the needs of Pickering (and Ajax) are worthy of our continued support. Many hands will make light work. We can share hope with many families that are going through rough times.

Pickering Cares 2011

The time has come to start planning for Pickering Cares 2011. Our team leaders will gather Thursday, February 24th to finalize the high level plan with teams then ready to work on the details. The major dates for 2011 are as follows:
 - Distribution of the Door Knockers  -  Week of May 7th
 - Pickup and sorting the food          - Saturday, May 14th

There are opportunities for all of the volunteers from 2010 and many more as we expand the drive to all of urban Pickering. The information for the volunteer coordinator will be announced soon. We look forward to the community pulling together once more to accomplish this important project that benefits people of genuine need in our community.
       

It's winding down

We are winding down from this years Food Drive. It looks like we are very close to 10,000 pounds of food raised for our Food Bank Partners. There is a lot to learn from this first attempt. Some people were missed that had put food out. We are very sorry. You can still leave a message at 905 831 2758 if you have a pickup.

There are an incredible number of people to thank. Hundreds of people gave of their time, energy and talents to make this possible. Rather than center out some, I would rather thank all. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We showed the world that Pickering Cares!

It's Done - The Food is in

Well, Saturday was amazing. Over 9000 pounds of food was collected. Our partners and volunteers were amazing. We are now cleaning up the loose ends. It is apparent that some houses were missed. If you have food for the food banks we would love to come and pick it up. Either email pickeringcares@gmail.com or leave a message at 905 839 1383 and a car will be dispatched.

There are lots of photos at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pickering-Cares/119849874715041?v=photos&ref=ts

Thank you Pickering. It is true that Pickering Cares!!!