This page was exported from Bancroft this Week [ https://www.bancroftthisweek.com ] Export date:Wed Sep 2 16:05:15 2026 / +0000 GMT ___________________________________________________ Title: Summer Music Kitchen Party raised around $700 for NHCC --------------------------------------------------- By Michael Riley, Local Journalism Initiative reporter After having had to be rescheduled due to inclement weather, the North Hastings Community Cupboard's Summer MusicKitchen Party raised approximately $700 on Aug. 4. The event, organized by Stephen Petrick, a journalist/educator/communityvolunteer and NHCC board member, was an open mic style event from 6 to 8 p.m., where local musicians helped raise moneyand donations of food for the charitable non-profit. For more information, contact Petrick at stevenpetrick@hotmail.com or at613-967-9492. Petrick comments to The Bancroft Times on the money raised for the Cupboard by this event.The NHCC has been serving the region as a registered and licensed food bank since 1992, and they belong to Feed Ontario,Food Banks Canada, and are a Good Food Organization under the Community Food Centres Canada. They are a registeredcharity and own their own building, allowing more funds to be diverted directly to their services. They also establishedBancroft's first community gardens, now located at their 2 Madawaska Street address. For more information, go towww.northhastingscommunitycupboard.com, or email Executive Director Marlene Bell at nhcc.executivedirector@gmail.com.While this type of event was something that the NHCC board had been talking about for a while, their former executivedirector and current board member Monica Piercey says that they started the concert series back in 2019 but COVID-19 cut itabortively short. She said that musicians from around the area came out to support it and they had a lot of fun, with themperforming on the NHCC's front porch. She said that Dave Hamm, a previous board member who is now deceased, alsoprovided a lot of support with the sound system, helping fill the roster with performers and performing himself.“This was an excellent public awareness event and helped us to bring a positive vibe and good public awareness to anotherwise challenging topic. We wanted the food bank to be a welcoming place and our front porch was definitely that. Wegathered food and monetary donations and shared food too. Now needs are higher than ever and we are having a hard timekeeping up the pace, let alone have enough funds to keep operations going. We are stalled in our very important kitchen renoand we really need to get this finished so we can offer more programs to our community that are needed. The space our foodbank and meal program are operating from are really tight and cause significant challenge to our ability to provide adequatefood service, putting our most vulnerable at risk,” she says.The Summer Music Kitchen Party isn't Petrick's first “kick at the can'” when it comes to doing a fundraiser, as he did asuccessful event to raise money for United Way HPE called United by Music a couple of years ago at the Bancroft VillagePlayhouse. The coverage for that event is in our sister paper Bancroft This Week in the Jan. 3, 2024 edition. While he says itwas a lot of work, he enjoys it and enjoys using music to support the local music industry and to raise money for worthwhilecauses.Petrick told The Bancroft Times that they're actually doing a similar event on Aug. 29 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Details for thatare available on their Facebook page.“In terms of favourite moments, the show started off with a young local musician, Gioia Guerriero. She did great and she's gota really powerful voice and it was a great way to start off the night,” he says.Guerriero told The Bancroft Times that she thought the event went quite well.“It was a lot of fun to play at. I think the event went well overall as well,” she says.Petrick said that they then had The Rebel Blossoms perform.“They're a well-known local band, so it was great to have them, too. The audience really enjoyed their music. One of theirmembers is a past board member, so they really understood the importance of the event. We also had Craig McEachernperform. He did some well-known favourites, like The Tragically Hip's ‘Bobcaygeon.' And we had a surprise guest, EricEpstein, a Vancouver performer who's in town as an actor with The Village Playhouse's production of ‘Fiddler on the Roof'came by and asked to play a few songs, so of course we let him and that was great. So, I guess we can say the Summer MusicKitchen Party had performers from across Canada. So given that this was a first-time event, and I certainly didn't know whatto expect, but we were really pleased. The event was what I had hoped for; a pleasant summer evening of music with guests inlawn chairs around our parking lot. It was cool how a lot of people just heard the music echoing through the neighbourhoodand came down to listen and buy food from the barbecue. This next event we're doing has been in the planning for a while, andwe thought we'd again have music to complement it. I think if we can have a good turnout on a July week night, we can haveeven better on a Saturday afternoon. So we'll see what happens. But again, we're really impressed how our communitycontinues to support us.” --------------------------------------------------- Images: --------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Post date: 2026-09-02 12:00:17 Post date GMT: 2026-09-02 16:00:17 Post modified date: 2026-09-02 12:00:19 Post modified date GMT: 2026-09-02 16:00:19 ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Export of Post and Page as text file has been powered by [ Universal Post Manager ] plugin from www.gconverters.co