GREENFIELD — Employees at the local Indiana Department Of Transportation office are embracing a “can do” attitude this year.
The Greenfield INDOT office, which oversees the 15 counties within the East Central District, is taking part in a fun winter food drive which also drives employees’ creativity.
CANstruction — facilitated by the Indiana State Personnel Department — is an annual challenge among state agencies to collect the most food for a winter food drive, then to construct something from the collected food.
“Not only is this really, really friendly competition, but we’re always trying to come up with the best way to get as many cans involved as possible and make the best design,” said Kyleigh Cramer, public relations director for INDOT’s East Central region.
Last year, the East Central office created a four-foot-long yellow truck — complete with a big plow scooping snow — just like the ones found plowing snow and laying down salt on Hancock County roads this week.
The design featured cans wrapped in bright yellow paper for the truck, black paper for the tires and plow, and wadded-up white paper for the snow.
“It was a really fun, creative design,” said Cramer, who said employees have a blast coming up with designs for the CANStruction contest each year.
More importantly, each team contributes as many cans of food as possible.
Last year, the East Central district collected 2,017 canned goods — the second highest number in the state — which employees delivered to the Knightstown Community Pantry and Community Sharing Foundation.
The Knightstown pantry will again be the recipient of this year’s local food drive, which kicked off Jan. 22 and runs through Feb. 2, when regional winners will be announced.
The East Central district is keeping this year’s design tightly under wraps “because we don’t want other agencies to guess what we’re going to do,” said Cramer.
“We try to think of something really unique. We find joy in making something out of it, and some people’s creativity is really out of this world,” she said.
Cramer said the competition not only builds camaraderie among employees, but is a great way to support Indiana communities, especially after the influx of food donations slows down after the holidays.
“This is a statewide effort to give back to the communities we work in by not only building and maintaining roads and bridges, but by giving these communities access to meals through food pantries,” said Cramer, who enjoys seeing the teambuilding that stems from the CANstruction event each year.
