The Pella Community Food Shelf hosted their first Coldest Night of the Year 5K fundraiser in late February and raised over $13,000 dollars as part of the event. 

The Coldest Night of the Year is an annual, family-friendly walk/run fundraiser hosted in locations across the United States and Canada. Held at the Pella Memorial Building, the event had 110 participants in the 5k and raised a total $13,632. Event Coordinator Lilly Lehr said that they are grateful for the community’s support to help the food shelf.

“We had a really amazing turnout and on top of that, we had an amazing team that was there every step of the way and really made it easy, along with the foundation that we worked with. They really have a seamless process of enabling organizations like ours to be able to host these events, and it was our first year [holding it] but we had many compliments about how smooth it was. People thought that this was something we’ve done multiple times, and so we were grateful for that.”

Here more about the Coldest Night of the Year 5K fundraiser from Lehr on today’s Let’s Talk Pella.