This winter, the Kemptville Salvation Army held their annual Fill-A-Bag Campaign at Bell Hall, a space donated by Kemptville Campus Education and Community Centre. The Fill-A-Bag campaign focuses on receiving, organizing and distributing donated non-perishable food and household items to individuals in the community who need an extra hand.

The Kemptville community did not disappoint, with the main lobby of Bell Hall quickly filling up with piles of pasta, crates of canned beans, tons of tuna, and peanut butter for days!

Charly Stewart is one of the core volunteers and has been helping the food drive since the Fill-A-Bag campaign began in 2011.The size of this operation is impressive: This year Charly and dozens of other volunteers divided their updated maps of our fast-growing community into zones and tasked 37 teams with dropping off empty bags on doorsteps. Two weeks later, volunteers picked up full donation bags and brought them to Bell Hall.

“We reconciled the 61 maps we had of our entire community,” says Charly, “and fanned out to cover this really large area.”

In just one day, volunteers drove out to pick up the brown paper bags full of food and brought back a whopping 2,300 bags! In the days that followed, about 700 more full bags of groceries trickled in as community members brought bags over to the campus temporary storage area. The total number of bags amounted to roughly 3,000.

With such a great community response, Charly says the giving spirit among volunteers is powerful and contagious.

“There’s an excitement when the volunteers return from picking up the bags,” says Charly. “One couple looked around our storage area at Bell Hall and were just in awe. Volunteers say, ‘Wow, is this ever important; I’m going to be back next year.’”

Some people use the food bank regularly but lightly: they buy most of their own groceries but get help with some items that may be beyond their food budget. Others find themselves in an emergency, with no money for food. Those individuals and families are supported for a short time as they get through a rough patch.

“It’s indicative of a community that cares. People really want to help, and I think everyone is aware how the recent economic situation stands, there really is more need,” says Charly.

The Salvation Army’s Fill-A-Bag campaign is the food bank’s major source of “supply” for the whole year—but where it used to last nine or ten months, it now is depleted in just three to five months.

Calvin and Erin Wong are pastors with the Kemptville Salvation Army, and Directors of the food bank.They have seen the Fill-A-Bag campaign grow, welcoming student volunteers, the Sea Cadets, and other community groups that come out to help. For some students who volunteer to pack the food hampers, the food bank is a familiar concept. Their family, or a family they know, may have had to use it at some point. For other young people, it’s an eye-opening experience.

“It helps them to understand that there’s so much need that is unseen in our community. A lot of couch-surfing, a lot of uncertainty. Any one of us could be in the situation of having a temporary setback. It could be an unplanned bill like a broken furnace, a lost job; we try to restore as much dignity as we can in the process,” says Calvin.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of people requiring support from the food bank has tripled.

“This year we’ve had the highest number of clients that we’ve ever had. So, now at Christmas, instead of purchasing for 37 families, it’s close to 130 families every other week,” states Calvin, adding that the donated food this year “speaks volumes to the attitude of North Grenville citizens towards those who are in need.”

The bounty of basic groceries temporarily stored and sorted on campus made a massive difference in the lives of people in North Grenville. Kemptville Campus was happy to be one of the many organizations and individuals who supported and continue to support this kind of community initiative.

For media inquiries, please contact:

Marta Zwart
Marketing and Events Coordinator
mzwart@kemptvillecampus.ca