Hamper Drive | St. George's School BC

About The Hamper Drive

Since the 1970s, the annual Hamper Drive has been a significant and beloved tradition at St. George’s School. Organized by faculty, with support from students, staff, and our school community, a combination of 300 hampers and care packages are delivered to Vancouver families who are experiencing challenges. Hampers include food, toys, books, gift cards as well as a care package. They are designed to support families through the difficult time over the Winter Break when many food support programs are unavailable. These hampers will be delivered to the Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) Early Years Program. Care packages include household necessities as well as gift cards and will be delivered to students and their families from other schools as well as community agencies. Working with our community organizations in Vancouver, we endeavour to align the support we offer with the needs of their families.

This is a special opportunity for our school community to come together and support the larger community. The Hamper Drive not only allows us to contribute to a cause that is bigger than us but also offers an important learning opportunity for our students about community service and social responsibility. At the School, we will discuss issues around food scarcity, socio-economic inequality, and the changing face of poverty. Above all, the Hamper Drive allows us to enact St. George’s Core Values in a meaningful, tangible, and significant way.

We Need Your Support

We partner with a variety of community organizations across Vancouver to ensure that the support we offer is aligned with the unique needs of the diverse families they serve. In response to the evolving world, our hampers now include gift cards to better accommodate these needs. Gift cards empower families by providing the flexibility to select items that best suit their personal preferences and circumstances, offering both respect and impactful support. To make this possible, we are especially seeking your financial contributions to help us raise $50,000 towards the purchase of these gift cards. Your support will make a meaningful difference in our drive this year.

As in previous years, each Junior School Homeroom and Senior School Advisory Group will be responsible for collecting specific items. Junior School Homerooms will gather food items, with designated grades also collecting new books (Grades 1, 3, 5, and 7) and toys (Kindergarten, Grades 2, 4, and 6). We kindly ask that books and toys be suitable for children aged 0-8 and that toys be non-battery operated, non-rechargeable, and gender-neutral. Senior School Advisory Groups will focus on collecting household necessities. We encourage you to shop for these items with your son and take the opportunity to discuss the importance of this initiative.

Over the next four weeks, a variety of events will take place at both the Junior and Senior Schools, providing all St. George’s students with the opportunity to engage with and learn from this meaningful experience. This year, we’re also excited to introduce new community events that will offer the entire Saints community a chance to come together during the festive season in support of the Hamper Drive. Stay tuned for more details in the eNews and on this homepage.

Finally, on Community Day, held on Saturday, December 14th at the Senior School, we will assemble hampers and care packages in preparation for delivery to our partner agencies and schools on December 16th. To make this assembly and delivery process a success, we are seeking parent volunteers to lend a hand on one or both of these days.

Please Make A Financial Contribution

As we enter the season of giving, we are asking the St. George’s community for their generous support of our annual Hamper Drive. Currently, the cost of feeding a family of four in Vancouver, BC, can exceed $1,000 a month, making it a challenging time for many families, especially over the holiday season. We rely heavily on the generosity of our community to make this initiative a success. Your contributions, no matter the size, will help us reach our goal of providing Vancouver families with extra support during this special time of year. We issue tax receipts for all donations over $25, making your generosity even more impactful. Together, we can help ensure that families throughout the Lower Mainland experience the warmth and joy of the season!

A Taste Of Winter

Enjoy An Exclusive Gourmet Dining Experience This January

Experience an unforgettable evening with A Taste Of Winter, an exclusive private dinner hosted by Ms. Karyn Roberts, Junior School Principal, and Mr. Len Gurr, Senior School Principal, at the prestigious Terminal City Club on Friday, January 24, 2025.

This extraordinary opportunity is for one Junior School parent and a guest and one Senior School parent and a guest to enjoy a magical evening where culinary mastery meets the season’s charms! Delight in a three-course gourmet dinner prepared by top local chefs, paired with fine wines. Connect with our school leaders as well as a fellow parent from our school community and their guest who is generously sponsoring this evening. This one-of-a-kind dining experience will support our Hamper Drive, helping families across the Lower Mainland this holiday season.

The Dinner Package Auction is exclusively available to current St. George’s School families. We appreciate your understanding and support.

Bid starts at $2,500

Please note that this contribution will not qualify for a tax receipt. We sincerely appreciate your generous support.

Volunteer Logistics

We are excited to invite parents to the School to help package and assemble hampers for families facing challenges this holiday season! Your time and energy are essential to the success of this meaningful initiative, and together with our students, faculty, and staff, we can make a real impact across the Lower Mainland. To ensure a great experience for everyone, we’re limiting the number of participants for each volunteer opportunity. Registrations will be reviewed to prevent duplicate sign-ups, and spots will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis. Confirmed volunteers will receive an email notification by Friday, December 6th. Volunteer opportunities are available on Saturday, December 14th and Monday, December 16th.

The History Of The Hamper Drive

By Sandi Cobb — from The Saint, Summer 2013

Like many traditions, the Hamper Drive wasn’t born fully-formed and recognizable. It has evolved over three decades. It began as a Scouts project. Scouts have been a part of St. George’s from the School’s earliest days, but during the 70s, at a time when Scouting world-wide was at a low ebb, it paradoxically grew at St. George’s under some inspired leadership to two Cub packs, a Venturer company, and a Rover group which averaged 50 boys each year, all from Grades 11 and 12. It was some of these senior boys, with Geof “Daddy” Stancombe as Scout Master, who started the neighbourhood can drives, stacking and counting several hundred cans in the old cafeteria, packing boxes, and delivering them to 15 or 20 local families. The old cafeteria overlooked the Wallace gym, where cans are still stacked and counted for the Hamper Drive, but now in thousands rather than hundreds. Some of these early deliveries were made in a Mini, on a route that could consist only of right-hand turns, due to a mechanical (or driver) idiosyncrasy that has been lost to the mists of time.

Over the 20 years that Daddy Stancombe guided the Hamper Drive, it grew from a neighbourhood can drive (continued today by the boarders of Harker Hall in their annual Reindeer Run) to the current remarkable operation that sees more than 300 families receive hampers each year. Geof’s vision was shared by John McDougall, who along with other Alumni developed a network of corporate support that added enormously to what could be achieved. Saints involvement still inspires the Hamper Drive tradition, as every year sees returning cohorts making boxes, staging, shipping, and delivering to families — always the most meaningful experience of the Hamper Drive.

Others have helped build the tradition: Saints families give generously to ensure every recipient family’s hamper is personalized with gift bags for parents, and toys, books, and gifts for the children. The combined passion and talents of Ed and Danette Mortimer ensured that the operation kept pace with Geof’s inexhaustible drive and energy; Ed’s mind-boggling organization of the production line and Danette’s compassionate management of the recipient families both involving oh-so-much-more than is ever seen on Hamper Drive day.

So with all that growth, it’s little wonder Memory Lane was commandeered as a last resort storage place (last resort because not every box always found its way down in time for Hamper Drive!) The first resort was Geof’s office, often so crammed with cans, boxes, and bags that he would have to borrow someone else’s desk and telephone to solicit donations from businesses and companies that, by the most tenuous connection, found themselves on Geof’s Hamper Drive Donors’ List — a list that was never allowed to get shorter, only longer. No company could ever claim to have “ceased trading”, no erstwhile Georgian connection “retired”; Geof would always take the opportunity to draw a new supporter into the Hamper Drive fold to fill the vacant spot, while the list got longer, the donations came in, Geof’s office overflowed. Even the portables (ah, the portables!) were filled until Saints families came again at the end of winter term to deliver it all.

Thousands of feet have shuffled behind boxes, thousands of arms have lifted, thousands of eyes have welled with tears, and thousands of hearts have been warmed in forging the Hamper Drive tradition. Long may it continue!