Students and staff at North Delta’s Delview Secondary set a new record Thursday night (Oct. 12), collecting 26,449 non-perishable food items during the school’s annual Thanks 4 Giving food drive.
The one-night event (affectionately dubbed T4G for short) sees students, parents and staff come together to collect tens of thousands of non-perishable food items, as well as recyclables and cash donations, in support of Deltassist and the Surrey Food Bank.
Thursday’s night-of total topped the previous high-water mark of 26,411 items collected in 2017 — the event’s 25th anniversary — with some donations still coming in, plus cash and recyclables yet to be added to the tally.
“This is just overwhelming,” Lindsay Bochen, teacher-sponsor for the T4G organizing committee, told the Reporter moments after the total was revealed. “We just really want to thank our community for once again coming together to help those people that need it the most.”
“We thought that this year was such a tough year for people, with having enough food to eat and not having enough money for housing and rent, and to beat our record was just unbelievable and totally unexpected. Everybody really came together today and made it happen, and that’s why I’m proud to be part of this Delview community.”
After an event kick-off in the school’s gym, teams of students fanned out across the community, collecting donations door-to-door and bringing them back to the school, where they were be counted, palletized and loaded into a waiting truck.
Hundreds of members of the school community took part in this year’s event, as did a half-dozen players from the Surrey Eagles hockey team.
Last year was the first “in person” T4G after two years of scaled-back “drive-thru” events due to COVID-19 restrictions. Still, the event collected 21,411 total items, exceeding the planning committee’s goal of 20,000.
For 2023, the committee had hoped to top 25,000.
T4G was started by teachers Ron McNeill, Barb Woodford and Sandy Ferguson in 1992 under the name “Ten-in-One” (10,000 items collected in one night). The school set a high-water mark in 2017, collecting an incredible 26,411 items for the event’s 25th anniversary.
Now in its 31st year, T4G was started by teachers Ron McNeill, Barb Woodford and Sandy Ferguson in 1992 under the name “Ten-in-One” (10,000 items collected in one night).
Over the past three decades, the drive has collected more than 460,000 non-perishable food items, becoming the school’s largest event of the year and a huge part of the culture for both staff and students.
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