The residents at the Elden Retirement Residence presented their collection of non perishable food items to the volunteers of The Helping Hand Food Bank on Thursday morning.
The Elden is just under a year old and has recently developed a resident’s council, called The Elden Committee.
The goal of the committee is to encourage residents to keep busy and get involved in the community.
The founding members of the Elden committee, Linda Devlin, Bob Sturgeon and Betty Maddocks started their first project of collecting food for the food bank about a month ago, getting all the residents involved.
“Last week we did kind of a boost and all of our staff got involved as well,” said General Manager at the Elden, Brigitte Blair.
“It was very overwhelming to see everyone get on board,” she said.
The Helping Hand Food Bank president Anne Silvey and her crew of volunteers, were touched by the donation.
“Thank you so much,” Silvey said to the group of residents while giving the committee members all a hug.
“I’d just like to express my thanks to the residents, without their cooperation, this wouldn’t have happened,” said Chairman of the Elden Committee, Bob Sturgeon.
Sales and Marketing Manager at the Elden, Jaime Robertson said it was a nice coincidence that the article written in Bradford Today on Aug. 29 about Silvey and the need for more food bank donations in the summer, was published around the same time the newly formed committee started the initiative.
“The article was a sheer coincidence because the residents had already started collecting donations, so I thought that was perfect timing,” she said on Thursday morning.
Committee member, Betty Maddocks said she likes to keep busy while living at the Elden and the food bank project was a great way to get involved in the community.
“I have worked with food banks before and I like that we are doing something constructive. I think that this brings a personal touch,” said Maddocks.
This was the first project developed by the Elden Committee, with plans of more to come in the future.
“We’re a community here, but we like to help the community too, and most of the people here have done some sort of volunteering in their life,” said Robertson.
