With one day left to donate, CBC Toronto’s Make the Season Kind has raised nearly $1 million for food banks in the Greater Toronto Area in 2024.
As of Dec. 29, the annual fundraiser, formerly known as Sounds of the Season, has raised $924,514.33, according to Daily Bread Food Bank.
And there’s still time to donate and help push the total past the million-dollar mark for the fourth time in the fundraiser’s history.
This year, more people in the GTA continued to turn to local food banks to get by, a trend that started at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and hasn’t changed as the cost of living has gone up.
About one in 10 people in Toronto currently depend on food banks, and last year more than 50 per cent of new food bank users came from households where at least one person is employed.
Sounds of the Season kicked off in early December with a full day of programming at the Toronto Broadcast Centre, including live broadcasts of Metro Morning and Here and Now at the Glenn Gould Studio.
On Friday, CBC Toronto celebrated the holiday season by raising money for food banks across the Greater Toronto Area. Make the Season Kind welcomed many speakers, organizations and Torontonians to the broadcast centre. CBC’s Julia Knope checked out the festivities of this year’s fundraiser.
The CBC Toronto fundraiser is part of CBC’s nationwide Make the Season Kind campaign, which celebrates kindness and generosity with special programming and events. Since 2015, CBC has worked with communities across the country to raise more than $51 million for local food banks and charitable organizations through their annual holiday drives.