With Christmas being a difficult time for many families at the best of times (and 2020 being far from the best of times), the Salvation Army Food Bank has been trying to keep up with increased demand for hampers this season. Today, Golden West Radio and the citizens of Estevan helped them meet that demand. 

From 8:00 in the morning until 8:00 at night, donations rolled in at Southern Plains Co-Op during Blow Away Hunger, presented by Power Dodge. By the end of a long but successful day, the food bank was full of hundreds of additional bags worth of food. 

Co-Op had set up small donation bags of food for purchase and promised to match the bags donated up to 100 of them. By 7:30 at night, the official count was 137 bags sold, meaning Co-Op will donate the equivalent of 100 more bags of food. 

"It's nice to see a nice big food drive like that come in," said Jane Ann Ireland of the Salvation Army. "Usually we have a number of them come in and this year this is the only one that's come in such as this."

In addition to the food bags, canned goods and boxes of instant potatoes as well as juice cartons, mac and cheese, and cereal all piled into shopping carts in the entranceway of Co-Op as the people of the southeast gradually piled food donations higher and higher. At the end of the evening, all the food was loaded onto a trailer, provided by Calvin at Johnson Brothers Equipment Rental, and brought to the Salvation Army Food Bank. 

"It does seem like quite a bit, maybe a bit more than even last year," Ireland said. "It's almost overwhelming having this much come in, knowing that there's this kind of support from the community regardless of what's going on."

Ireland added that people use the food bank because they have to, not because they want to, and she was very thankful for the community support.