2019 Food Drive

New Hamburg Firebirds Friday Night fill the Ambulance Game Night Food Drive, how it came about and thank you to All!

For many years Ritz Printing has sponsored a New Hamburg Firebirds home game night and has given free tickets to all students in the surrounding area schools. Five years ago we did something a little different. We picked the Friday night’s game of the Thanksgiving weekend and asked for a non perishable food donation as part of the free admission. It was a successful night. Four years ago, again with the help of the students, we asked for their support on a drive of a larger scale. Local schools were asked to participated in the “Shopping Cart Challenge”. Two weeks before the Thanksgiving weekend each schools was given free tickets for Thanksgiving Friday Night game and two shopping carts. The idea was to fill the shopping carts with non perishable food items. This coincided with the Firebirds Thanksgiving Friday Game Night Food Drive. The hope was to fill an ambulance the night of the game. The ambulance went to each school the morning of game day to collect the food donations and then was at the game that night and continued to get filled. This became reality. Over the last 5 years more than 19,100 lb. of non perishable food items have been collected. Absolutely incredible! Kids helping community. What a reward!

Last year we introduced The Early Bird Meet the Players Day that happened the Saturday before Game Night as part of the drive both at Sobeys and NoFrills.

The Firebirds launched this years Food Drive at the Poor Boys luncheon with a wrapped food package on each of the 32 tables for $10.00 each. They were all purchased!… and 125 of the packages, as well as other food donations, were purchased during the Sobeys and NoFrills Early Bird Meet the Players day!

The New Hamburg Firebirds Hockey Club and their Players would like to give a special thank you to Becky Pagett and her crew from Waterloo Region Association of Professional Paramedics who volunteered their entire day collecting donated food from the schools of Baden Public, Sir Adam Beck Public, Waterloo Oxford Secondary, Forest Glen Public, Grandview and Holy Family who participated in the New Hamburg Firebirds Shopping Cart Challenge food drive. They continued collecting donations at the Firebirds Thanksgiving Food Drive Friday Night Game and finished their evening by dropping off 7,000 lbs. of food to the Wilmot Family Resource Centre.

They would also like to thank the staff and especially the students of the participating schools for their donations and having pick ups so well organized. Becky was overwhelmed by the response from the students and their help in getting everything to the ambulance. Kids helping community. What a reward! Absolutely incredible!

Thanks to Bill and Jill Fleming from Sobeys and Josh from Mackay’s NoFrills for having the Thanksgiving Early Bird Meet the Players day at their locations. And as well as everyone else that donated at the game with both food and monetary donations.

The New Hamburg Firebirds Thanksgiving Food Drive’s huge success only became a reality because of the phenomenal help of these people and groups.

2,275 lbs. was collected at the Early Bird Meet the Players, The Shopping Cart Challenge brought in 3,344 lbs. from the participating schools and 1,433 lbs. at the night of the game. Grand total for this year 7,052 lbs.!!! as well as over $400.00

One last thing. The game was attended by 704 people and 612 of them had the special food drive ticket… What a day! What a night! Great job everyone!

Morgan Miller