Niagara IceDogs & Brock Badgers Support Coach4Food
The Niagara IceDogs are pleased to announce that we will be joining the Brock Badgers to bring the Coach4Food initiative to the Niagara Region this year.
The Coach4Food program was started by Tom Hedican in North Bay in 2005 and has grown from raising 1,000 pounds of food the first year, to an amazing 116,000 pounds of food a year ago. The IceDogs are proud to be among the teams selected by Tom to join in this program as it expands outside of North Bay for the first time this year. The expansion has been made possible by a grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation.
The way this program is setup is the IceDogs and Badgers will work with local minor hockey teams to help collect food and cash donations to go to local food banks. In return, the IceDogs and Badgers are working together to help provide some great incentives for minor hockey teams to participate.
The Niagara IceDogs will run an open practice for any teams that collect 500+ lbs. worth of food and/or equivalent cash donations. The top collecting team for each area’s food bank (min. 500 lbs. food and/or cash equivalent) will then be invited to join the IceDogs for our New Year’s Eve game on December 31st, where we will recognize each area’s top donating team and the overall Coach4Food efforts. On top of that, the Brock Badgers and head coach Murray Nystrom, will also help run a practice for each of the top collecting teams from the seven Niagara area food banks.
This initiative is for all minor hockey teams across the Niagara Region and what we feel is a key part of this program is that all the food and money donated to the program will stay with the local food bank in the donating team’s area. For example, if a team in St. Catharines donates; the donation stays in St. Catharines, if a team in Niagara Falls donates; the donation stays in Niagara Falls, etc. By doing this, we are helping spread the donations throughout the region and hopefully helping as many people as possible.
To participate in this program, each player from participating teams is encouraged to collect food and/or money donations and then bring those donations to their local food bank. Once there, the food bank will weigh their donation (financial donations are $1=1.5 lbs.) and then fill out a form confirming your donation. The forms will then be totaled up and to determine the top donating teams
This initiative kicks off Monday, October 31st and donations will be accepted for the program until Monday, December 5th.
We feel that this is a great initiative that we are proud to be a part of, and we look forward to helping grow the program outside of North Bay.
We have heard nothing but great things from the North Bay Food Bank and we hope that, this program can help bring needed support to food banks throughout the Niagara Region.
About The Ontario Trillium Foundation
The Ontario Trillium Foundation is an agency of the Government of Ontario.
A leading grantmaker in Canada , the Ontario Trillium Foundation strengthens the capacity of the voluntary sector through investments in community-based initiatives. An agency of the Government of Ontario, OTF builds healthy and vibrant communities. For more information, please visit the website at: www.otf.ca
For more information, please contact Wade Graham at 905-687-3641 or [email protected].
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