Families are preparing large feasts for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, but for many Utahns, there won’t even be enough food for the rest of the year, so the U is stepping in to help.
The Latter-day Saint Student Association8212;LDS fraternities and sororities8212;gathered during the weekend to hold its annual battle of the chapters, where it collected food and money for the Utah Food Bank to help needy families for the holidays. LDSSA had a goal to raise 10,000 food items for the food bank and ended up raising about 22,000 food items.
“It was amazing,” said Katie Ence, a senior in exercise and sport science. “We were blown away from not just the chapters, but the response from the people.”
Three years ago, the LDSSA collected only a few hundred pounds, but this year, the group got excited for it, said Parker Hill, a senior in bioengineering.
About 475 people participated in the Friday event to help box, load and count the food items. They also asked for $3 donations at the door. The group ended up collecting $1,700 for the food bank.
Twenty-seven LDSSA sorority and fraternity chapters were divided into teams of three and assigned a neighborhood to collect food in early October. They brought all the collected food to the Salt Lake Community College’s Redwood campus on Friday to be counted and boxed up for the food bank.
The winning team was composed of the fraternities Nu and Iopa and the sorority Beta. They collected more than 5,600 food items, 900 more items than the next closest team.
“Knowing that it was going to needy families was great,” said Dash Hixon, a junior in Spanish.
Mike Mangum/The Daily Utah ChronicleDan Brinton, a member of the LDSSA, helps load a truckload of food for a donation to the Utah Food Bank as part of the Rivalry Week Food drive.