Less scaring, more caring

Dal students looking to dress up and hit the streets for some Halloween fun this year can do so while helping combat food insecurity on campus and in the community.

Trick or Eat 2018, hosted by the Dalhousie Student Union (DSU) as part of a national campaign involving thousands of students at universities across the country, kicks off at 6 p.m. Halloween night (October 31) in the lobby of the Student Union Building (SUB).

From there, volunteers will head out in teams to go door to door in nearby neighbourhoods to ask the community for non-perishable food items to support Feed Nova Scotia, the Dalhousie Student Union Food Bank and Greater Love — a not-for-profit that offers food and friendship to poor, homeless, and vulnerable people in downtown Halifax.

“We want to encourage students to be more aware of the fact that even if food insecurity doesn’t affect them, it definitely affects their peers and people in their community,” says Breton Doucet, member services coordinator with the DSU.

Teams will gather the food in grocery carts, which will then be brought back to the SUB and sorted into boxes before being distributed the following day to the local organizations.

“We’re just distributing the wealth a little bit. Hopefully we’ll get a lot so that we’ll have a lot to donate to everybody,” says Doucet.

A similar food drive run independently last year by the DSU yielded 1,190 pounds of food, or about 12 grocery carts. Doucet says she would love to exceed that this year.

Students can register to volunteer through Meal Exchange, the Toronto-based charity that facilitates the event each year.

“It’s something we want to raise awareness for and make sure that students can get involved in an easy and fun way to make it interesting for them,” says Doucet.