Family ‘overwhelmed’ by support for cereal drive in late son’s honour

One room in Roberta Faroldi’s home is stacked floor to ceiling with the familiar yellow boxes of Cheerios and Shreddies cereal, and she couldn’t be happier.

That’s because the cereal has all been donated in honour of her late son, Brady Faroldi, and will now play an important role in ensuring students throughout the region receive a complete breakfast each morning before school.

As our readers may recall, the family honours their son’s memory annually with a cereal drive in support of the Food Sharing Project, a local charity that provides healthy food to students in Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington school nutrition programs. The family was inspired to do so following Brady’s passing, as Brady was passionate about school nutrition programs as he was working on placement at a local school. At the time, Brady was working towards his dream of becoming a teacher, and completing teacher’s college through Queen’s University. The cereal drive takes place each November.

Sadly, Brady passed away in 2016 at the young age of 26 due to an unknown cardiac issue.

In an attempt to continue Brady’s work to benefit the Food Sharing Project, the family has run an annual cereal drive, collecting boxes of the approved cereals for nutrition programs. And this year, the cereal drive has grown tremendously.

“We are overwhelmed with the support we have received from our amazing friends, family, neighbours and even from total strangers. This has been our biggest year yet,” Roberta said.

The approximate 1,200 boxes of cereal that have been collected at the family residence will be able to provide a healthy breakfast to students in need for approximately three months.

“To learn well children need to eat well. Thank you to everyone who helped us reach this amazing goal,” Roberta said on behalf of her family, including her daughter, Brianna (Brady’s sister), and partner Brian Cassidy. To find out more about Brady’s story and the family’s cereal drive, read our original article here.