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Coldest Night of the Year raises over $100,000 for Orangeville Food Bank

March 3, 2022   ·   0 Comments

By Sam Odrowski

A record was broken over the weekend here in Orangeville.

Just over $100,000 was raised for the local food bank during the 5^th Annual Coldest Night of the Year (CNOY) walk on Saturday (Feb. 26), far exceeding the charity’s goal of generating $75,000, and last year’s record of just under $80,000.

There were 308 walkers participating across 52 teams, with Shelley Scriver raising the most as an individual at $4,625, while the team that raised the highest amount was Mark’s Marchers, who generated $10,280.

CNOY co-organizer and food manager at the Orangeville Food Bank Savanaha O’Reilly said it was great to hold an in-person event again for the first time since 2020.

“It was pretty special,” she told the Citizen. “It was nice to be with people, nice to have everybody from the community here. The event was very energetic. You could you could kind of feel the buzz with everybody here. It was great.”

Walkers had the option to join in with the community event on Saturday or do their own walk if they weren’t comfortable gathering in-person.

“We had a great turnout for both [walking formats],” said O’Reilly. “Whatever they were comfortable with worked for us.”

The concept behind CNOY is to get people walking in the cold to get a hint of what it might be like to experience homelessness.

“The entire event is based around the hungry, hurting and homeless of our community, and them being out in the cold through the cold months and the cold nights,” O’Reilly explained.

“This year was actually our coldest year, I think, to date, so we definitely felt it as walkers and participants, and volunteers.”

O’Reilly noted that the money generated from this year’s CNOY walk will go a long way in helping the Orangeville Food Bank provide its services to those in need.

“We raised just over $101,000, and it means that we can continue to provide the milk and the eggs and the produce and extra proteins for clients, and keep the lights on in the building, and help with all of those expenses that we have continuously coming in,” she explained. “It’s a huge help for us. It covers probably at least three months’ worth of expenses for us.”

The local food bank reopened for “in-person shopping” on Tuesday (March 1), O’Reilly told the Citizen. This means clients can enter into the food bank’s doors and select their items as if they were a grocery store.

The food bank’s gardens will be ready to plant shortly with the spring around the corner and their commercial kitchen is currently under renovations.

“Hopefully that will be up and running shortly, and we can we can have some people in the kitchen again, sharing food and making food together,” O’Reilly noted.

She said the Orangeville Food Bank is very appreciative of the walkers, sponsors and members of the community who donated to CNOY this year.

“It was very successful and we really look forward to doing it next year,” O’Reilly enthused. “It was very heartwarming to spend time with people for the first time in a few years.”

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