Community Living Chatham-Kent’s Box Lunch event wrapped up successfully on March 7th, after delivering over 3,100 lunches across the municipality. The entire event took around 70 volunteers, working tirelessly for the two-hour duration.
The 2019 Box Lunch raised over $9,000 for the agency. The money will go towards supporting the agency’s programs, which help more than 550 people in Chatham-Kent. In addition, enough funds were collected to be able to provide an impressive 1,555 lunches towards local school nutrition programs.
According to Tammy Chouinard, the Manager of Community Relations with Community Living Chatham-Kent, this fundraiser had two goals this year – raise funds for the agency and provide lunch to as many kids as possible. The event relies heavily on community support, especially when it comes to the success of their new ‘Box Lunch for Kids’ program.
“The new Box Lunch for Kids program was a huge success,” Chouinard said. “We were able to launch this concept through the support of sponsors like Pat Murray of North Kent Wind and South Kent Wind, and later offered the option for our community to also donate to it. We were ecstatic with the amount of support we received from the Chatham-Kent community, which resulted in lunches being distributed to schools in every corner of C-K.”
Chouinard also thanked Teksavvy and First Choice Building Restoration for their sponsorship and donations. She stated that Subway was also a huge contributor in this new program, and that she was grateful for all Subway’s help in getting boxed lunches ready to get out into the community. On a whole, they serviced about 1,800 more people this year than last year. Chouinard also expressed a sincere appreciation to all the incredible volunteers who offered their time and their vehicles to ensure the increased amount of lunches were out within the same time frame.
“Our volunteers had to deliver over double the amount of lunches to every community within Chatham-Kent and they did it,” Chouinard said. “Everyone just stepped up to make sure it happened.”
Now Community Living Chatham-Kent is setting their sights on May, Community Living Month. They’re also in the midst of planning their annual golf tournament which will take place June 8th.
To contact Community Living Chatham-Kent, you can call 519-352-1174 x 232 (Tammy Chouinard).
