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Associa employees throughout North America got to work by volunteering in their communities during the annual The Great Giveback. Magnum York was proud to contribute by volunteering with local charities to give back to the community. Associa’s 2023 Great Giveback was a huge success: there were a grand total of 50 different volunteer events with an estimated 898 volunteers spending 3,592 hours giving back to local communities! to see out all of the Great Giveback submissions.
Magnum York Calgary Volunteers at the Calgary Food Bank
On Monday, March 10th, 2023, the day started a little early for our Calgary Branch team members. With an arrival time of 7:30am at the Calgary Food Bank, nine of our volunteers met up in the Food Bank parking lot. We were shuttled to the Food Bank’s Operations Center, a new 60,000 square foot facility located in South East Calgary, where we were met by a volunteer intake coordinator. Armed with name tags and a brief Health & Safety orientation, we were put to work directly.
Our tasks that morning involved packing food hampers, actual shopping carts with food for the clients, and taking them out to clients’ vehicles. Part of the team also packed bags with nice-to-have items (non-essentials) to supplement hampers, including toilet paper, condiments, noodle packages, prepared mix packages and beverages. The Calgary Food Bank serves around 500 clients daily, which is a huge increase over the 150-200 clients they used to see before the pandemic. The economic situation in Calgary is such that clients often have to choose between food and shelter, a choice no one should ever have to make. The top three reasons for Calgarians using the food bank include that they are on fixed government benefits (such as AISH or OAS), they are unemployed or looking for work, or that their full-time income is insufficient for them to afford groceries. Volunteers to the Calgary Food Bank accounted for 39% of their workforce, giving over 104,000 hours of time in 2022.
The Food Bank also sends food to affiliate organizations so they can focus their resources on important programs preventing food insecurity.
As if that wasn’t enough, we had an additional team of four head to the Food Bank for an afternoon shift. That team packaged food items as well, including pasta, canned goods, meal kits and granola bars (an essential for school age children for snacks and lunches).
Our morning team was proud to fill 135 shopping carts for food bank clients that morning, and the afternoon team was able to package 9 pallets, or three tons of food, for clients. Magnum York was very pleased that Associa, our parent company, was able to sponsor this initiative for our local community.
If you want to give back through the Calgary Food Bank, please consider donating your time, money or even planting vegetables in your own garden to donate at the end of the season.
Magnum York Edmonton Delivers water and granola bars to those in need
Our Edmonton office gather up a crew on a cool March morning for their contribution to the Great Giveback. The team, and Gnorman, piled into a van filled with goods to distribute to those in need. The team did the shopping and distribution and interacted with those they helped.
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