Five Hole for Food — great event, great cause!

Fighting for the puck (ball) with Megan Stewart
Me with Megan Stewart, Vancouver Courier amateur sports reporter and great street hockey player

For the third year in a row I've had the privilege of joining in a fun (and tiring) street hockey competition on Granville Mall in downtown Vancouver called Five Hole for Food (FHFF). Five Hole for Food is an annual coast to coast tour playing hockey to support food banks across Canada. A rink is set up in the heart of each city and anyone and everyone is invited to come out to play hockey to fight hunger. You just have to bring a stick, bring a can of food, and have fun. 100% of the proceeds go to the local food bank in each city.

The event keeps growing year after year thanks to the youthful and spirited team behind it, led by the amazing Richard Loat and his VP communications Dixon Tam, and Public Relations guru Crystal Kwon, all of whom I met over Twitter, and of course, street hockey. FHFF is an initiative born of and driven by social media. The whole team engage using Twitter, Facebook to raise awareness for their cause. During the weeks of their cross-Canada campaign thousands of tweets featured the #FHFF hashtag.

I played in one of the two "media" games, where reporters and staff from various TV, radio, print and online news sources join in. Perhaps the biggest surprise for me that day was actually scoring a goal on a pretty good goalie!

Congratulations to everyone involved. I'll wear my "Will Play Hockey for Food" t-shirt with pride this summer.