By Rori Bennett – Junior Reporter
The May 16th Miracle saw the community of Dresden step up with the entire Municipality of Chatham-Kent and come together with the purpose of refilling the local food banks.
The planning and marketing for the May 16th Miracle began approximately three weeks ago.
Organizers began advertising and looking for volunteers, drivers and businesses who were able to promote the event or be a drop of location.
“I volunteered to help when I heard about this event because my grandparents are very active volunteers and I wanted to join them to help the community of Dresden,” Brady Grubb, a Grade 12 student at Lambton-Kent Composite School and and a zone leader for the Dresden event, told the Sydenham Current.
“As student council Prime Minister at LK this year, I also organized a food drive at Halloween. I enjoyed being a part of an event of this scale.”
Grubb said the day went very well.
“My group was eager to help and we collected a lot of food for the food bank,” he said.
“I had four drivers and they each were well loaded with donations. My siblings worked with me as well, and it was a great way to help the community as a family.”
Advertising for the event did not set any particular goals and asked only that people give what they could.
Organizers wanted as many volunteers as possible to collect as much food as possible and help as many people as possible.
The organizing committee planned to have all the food donated from a particular community stay in that community. However, if that town collected a surplus, and another town was short, the food donations would be shared.
In Dresden, a majority of the town’s approximately 3,000 residents made a donation to the miracle, said Stuart Kiar, who captained the Dresden portion of the event.
Kiar said over 200 volunteers gave their time to the cause and in total, 28 trucks were used to deliver food to the food bank at Dresden Community Church.
“As I understand, the CK leadership team was formed by a couple of individuals who were looking for someway to help the food banks, who they had heard were beginning to see an uptick in use as a result of COVID,” Kiar said.
“They put together a group of people and then discussed how best to roll it out. They recruited community captains in each community. In Dresden, it was myself and Laura Pollard (who also runs the food bank in Dresden.) Then everything moved forward… all in three and a half weeks.”
With the massive volume of donations made across Chatham-Kent, it will take several days before a final tally will be announced.
Here are some photos shared on social media from the Dresden portion of the event:
