Roughly half-a-dozen students from the Olds High School leadership class collected 162 kilograms of non-perishable food items for the Mountain View Food Bank on Halloween.
The group was inspired by members of the Olds College Broncos—who had visited classes at the school to talk about community involvement— to go out into the community and, instead of asking for candy, collect the donations for the food bank.
“A bunch of us got together and we just went around from house to house asking for the non-perishable food items and we got it all together. We just had fun doing that,” said Tirioin Goodinson, a Grade 11 student at OHS.
She said the large group split up into a couple of smaller groups while trick-or-treating with two of her friends starting on the west side of Highway 2A near OHS and then proceeding west toward Ecole Deer Meadow School while another group of students went into the Silverthorn area.
The group was pleased with the community response, Goodinson said.
“Everybody was pretty happy about what we were doing and they were saying how generous we were and how much of a good opportunity for the food bank and they were glad to see young students doing this instead of going around and causing havoc,” she said.
Gayle Meier, a director with the food bank, said she was impressed by the effort of the students.
“It's just awesome what these kids did,” she said.
Goodinson said she enjoyed helping out a worthy volunteer organization.
“I just think it was a really good experience because it's not often you get to do that and get such a reaction but I had a lot of fun doing it as well,” she said.
