A group of Airdrie youth showed off their creativity and charitable spirit as part of Youth Volunteer Corps’ (YVC) 2020 CANstruction contest.
On Sept. 26, nine members of the Airdrie Youth Volunteer Corps (YVC-Airdrie) gathered at the entrance to the local Real Canadian Superstore and assembled 837 canned food items into a three-dimensional sculpture of the Rocky Mountains. According to Assistant Program Director Dorothy May, the youth came up with the idea to recreate the Rockies during a brainstorming session.
“They thought the Rocky Mountains were a good representation of Airdrie and Alberta, because we’re competing against other YVC affiliates across North America,” she said. “Most of them are in the U.S. and there are just three in Canada, so we wanted to be sure to represent Canada in that sense.”
The CANstruction contest is part of YVC’s 2020 Summit, which is being held virtually this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Typically, May said, the summit would take place in Pennsylvania and be attended by dozens of YVC affiliates from across North America. She said more than 40 affiliates are competing in the contest.
“During the summit, they usually do a great big service project, so this is their way of doing a service project in a distanced way,” she said.
For the contest, May said YVC-Airdrie was tasked with soliciting canned food donations and then assembling them into a structure. After the sculpture was built, the local corp submitted a photo to YVC, which will judge it against the submissions of more than 40 other affiliates. YVC will announce which affiliate won the CANstruction contest Oct. 17.
“It’s our first time trying it and I think it’s a good learning experience,” May said. “[It includes] everything from brainstorming and teamwork to looking up different contacts for the store managers, what to say to them, calculating a plan to know how many cans we have – there’s a lot of different learning that went into this.”
May added all 837 cans were donated to the Airdrie Food Bank after the structure was dismantled. YVC will also donate 50 cents from each can back to YVC-Airdrie to support future programming, she said.
Brooke Forbes, 13, was among the volunteers who helped build the can sculpture. The École Airdrie Middle School student said she joined YVC-Airdrie because she was interested in pursuing volunteer opportunities.
“I was already wanting to do some volunteering, and I saw it so thought it would be great,” she said, adding volunteering opens up other doors as well. “Really, it’s about being able to help people.”
According to May, YVC-Airdrie formed in September 2019 as a means of engaging Airdrie’s youth in team-based volunteer opportunities that address social and community needs. The corps has volunteered at the 2019 Airdrie Festival of Lights and the 2020 Alberta Winter Games. Recently, YVC-Airdrie harvested thousands of pounds of produce from a community garden they helped maintain throughout the summer in Crossfield.Scott Strasser, AirdrieToday.com
Follow me on Twitter @scottstrasser19
