The Better Together Food Drive hosted by Hillcrest Church is an annual event that usually collects food donations over Halloween weekend to give to the Moose Jaw Food Bank.

The food drive this past weekend looked a little different. Usually, the church would recruit volunteers to go from house to house over the Halloween weekend collecting non-perishable food donations. However, safety was a big concern with the pandemic. So, Hillcrest Church decided to ask the community for online and mail-in cheque donations. They set a price goal of $50,000.

"People have been giving all week leading up to the weekend because we had got the information out to households the week previous to that. So, people knew how they could give and they had already started giving and then over the weekend we definitely saw that number increase as well," says Better Together Coordinator Daycee Richardson.

After the weekend wrapped up the total donation was just over $35,000. Although, Richardson is still confident of reaching the goal of $50,000 because late cheques usually trickle in within the next two weeks after the weekend.

One large donation that was made came from Casino Moose Jaw as they promised to match the first $10,000 donated and they kept true to that promise.

The donations are all going to the Moose Jaw Food Bank which will be used to buy food for the hampers they give out to the public. The Food Bank usually serves around 950 people per month and a lot of them are families with young children. The money that has been donated from this food drive will help the Food Bank serve at least 1/3 of those people.

Hillcrest Church and the Moose Jaw Food Bank are extremely appreciative of all the donations made to help the community.