With Thanksgiving only four days away and Toronto's Daily Bread Food Bank in desperate need of donations,
Breakfast Television kicked things into high gear Thursday and announced that they're hosting a food drive to help out.
"We really need our viewers to come through. We're only a few days away from Thanksgiving and the DBFB's cupboards are literally bare," explained
BT's Kevin Frankish. "So we want to help out and we know our viewers always come through and we have no doubt they'll come through [Friday]."
This will mark the third year that the
BT crew has taken on the challenge of gathering food items for the food bank.
Frankish, Frank Ferragine and
Jennifer Valentyne will be live at Longo's at
Leslie and York Mills starting at 6am Friday to accept donations. Tune in for live updates throughout the day on
CP24 and
City
News.
And in other efforts to boost donations, the DBFB has also partnered with
Purolator and the
Toronto Argonauts to promote the "Tackle Hunger" food drive. Fans are being asked to drop off non-perishable food items at the
Rogers Centre gates during Saturday's game against the
Edmonton Eskimos.
"It's definitely a nice opportunity for guys to come out and help by donating money, bringing canned goods or any type of food that's going to help out," said Argos quarterback Michael Bishop.
Gail Nyberg, a spokesperson for the DBFB, said the food drive is falling short of its target. "We're off to a really slow start but we're very hopeful that that game on Saturday combined with
BT on Friday and the partnership with the Argos and Purolator should pull this drive up," said Nyberg.
Barbara Walkden from the Yonge Street Mission Food Bank explained how families come to depend on the DBFB to make it through the day.
"Lots of people once they pay their rent, there's not a lot left for food and this is where they have to come," Walkden said.
Megan Bolton, a mother of two, is a perfect example. While the 23-year-old waits for her next social assistance cheque to arrive she can't afford to buy baby formula, baby food and diapers.
So far only 100,000 pounds of food has been donated, which is a far cry from the organization's 900,000-pound target.
For more information on how to make a donation to the DBFB, click
here.