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Most food donated in 24 hours-world record
set by Toronto
[April 14] TORONTO, Canada--119,068 kilograms was raised
in one day by the Greater Toronto Apartment Association for
the Toronto Daily Bread Food Bank, setting the new world record
for the Most food donated by a city in 24 hours.
Photo: Food collected during the Spring Hope
Food Drive waits to be sorted at the Daily Bread Food Bank's
headquarters.From left, Samantha Wilkinson of the Greater
Toronto Apartments Association, event organizer Bonnie Hoy,
Mississauga's Brad Butt of the GTAA and Christopher Hatch
of Foodpath and Gail Nyberg of Daily Bread Food bank were
elated with the public response to their appeal.
(enlarge
photo)
"I've always said that Toronto is the greatest
city in the world," Bonnie Hoy, co-ordinator of volunteers
for the drive, told the cheering throng of some 100 people
at the food bank's warehouse on New Toronto St., near Islington
Ave., yesterday evening. "And the city just proved it all
over again."
Starting at 6:30 p.m., volunteers canvassed
more than 160,000 apartment suites in 1,000 buildings in the
Greater Toronto Area asking for donations, said Brad Butt,
president of the apartment association.
Fifty trucks worked through the night hauling
the food to the west-end warehouse, where each container was
weighed, recorded by a panel of independent referees, and
then moved to a nearby storage area. The final figures were
sent to Guinness, and officials hope the record will be verified
in a few days.
"I think the residents who live in those buildings
should be very proud of themselves," a happy but exhausted
Butt said last night. "It feels great to break the record
but more importantly we're battling hunger," he said.
Donations to the project, called the Spring Hope
Food Drive, couldn't have come at a better time, said Gail
Nyberg, executive director of the food bank. "Hunger doesn't
take a summer vacation, but many of our regular donors do,"
she said. "I'm just so proud of those tenants. It's just an
incredible feat. Thank you, Greater Toronto."
The food bank is a non-profit charitable organization
dedicated to fighting hunger. Last year, more than 905,000
people in the GTA relied on food banks, 34 per cent of them
children.
According to Butt, trucks working through the
night picked up food donations from GTAA buildings and delivered
them to the Daily Bread's Etobicoke headquarters to be collected
and weighed within the 24-hour timeframe. He said the GTAA
would ensure that food donated from a particular area of the
city, would go to people in need from that same area through
food banks such as North York Harvest and Mississauga Foodpath.
The previous record of 100,244 kilograms was
set by Regina two years ago.
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