Fill the Shelves: AC Food Cupboard

Project Description:

As per a recent study “Rising tuition driving more students to campus food banks” by CBC News, 40% of Canadian students are facing food insecurity, and campus food banks cannot keep up with demands. The project “Fill the Shelves” aimed to provide assistance to the Algonquin College Food Cupboard Program which provides for the students who require services with food and other basic necessities. The support was extended in the form of donated and purchased items from the most pressing needs of the Food Cupboard in the last twelve months, meeting both quality and quantity goals.

The execution of the project started on the 4th of July, 2022. The team ran a fundraiser seeking donations as well as an online yard sale by procuring used or old items from free or cheap garage sales, Facebook marketplace, Kijiji, etc. and reselling the same obtaining profit to be used to fulfill the project’s goal. Some of the team members channeled their creative side towards the initiative and managed to sell their paintings, making some profit. The corporate chains though did not run the donation campaign on their retail floor as per the team’s original plan, yet agreed to give a percentage discount for the items bought from their stores, helping a lot in the project’s success.

AC Food Cupboard has been helping students for quite some time now and during the campaign, the team met a few ex-students who have benefitted from the program in the past and were willing to extend their helping hands to the cause now. For the online yard sale, the members kept the online market in check throughout, procuring items such as cycle, sofa, lamps, table, etc. for a very cheap price and reselling them for a good margin.

Overall, the project aimed at achieving an ROI of at least 25:1 on the initial starter fund of $40.00 provided by the School of Business, Algonquin College, Ottawa and was able to meet the goal by procuring items worth $1,007.81 from the amount of money collected and planning on smart buying techniques. The procured items were delivered successfully to the AC Food Cupboard on 29th July 2022, i.e., in less than a month’s time of execution.

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