Ross and the gang take the afternoon off, go for a drive (2 photos)

To help the needy at Christmas, Sault MPP Ross Romano and a team of volunteers spent three hours Friday afternoon knocking on doors, collecting non-perishable food items to help the needy at the Sault Ste. Marie Soup Kitchen Community Centre.

Several local businesses and organizations have done the same over the past couple of months, and have challenged others to do so.

“When the challenge went out and we were asked to put one box in the office to gather canned goods for the Soup Kitchen for the holiday season, I said to our staff ‘it’s not good enough,’ we can do a lot better than that, so we decided to take half the day and do this,” Romano said.

“We asked for volunteers and I’ve got six people from my office and my Toronto staff here as well, people who assisted me in my campaign, we had a pizza party at my office today at noon hour, then we started knocking on doors at 1 p.m., and we had four crews of four people, so we had 16 people in total that went out.”

“Our goal was to get 16 boxes of canned food for the Soup Kitchen (Romano estimated the team came in with 20)…we targeted the north, south, east and west ends of the city.”

Eight vehicles drove the volunteers around town Friday.

The Sault’s Maitland Ford Lincoln dealership pitched in with the lend of a van for Romano’s food drive.

Romano thanked his constituency office staff, family, friends and three Superior Heights Collegiate students for helping out.