Four CyRides took a beating this weekend at the local Hy-Vees and Fareways.

The eighth annual Stuff the Bus food drive was Oct. 22 and 23. For the event, volunteers collected food and hygiene items as well as money donations at all Hy-Vee and Fareway locations in Ames. Those donations were then placed on the CyRides, which were stationed in the parking lots of each location.

All donations benefited Mid-Iowa Community Action.

Danielle Gibbons, a Stuff the Bus coordinator, said the event went by quickly.

“I’d never done [Stuff the Bus] before,” she said. “It went by really quickly, and we did a lot for MICA in just two days.”

Gibbons said the goals for this year’s event were altered due to Cub Foods’ closing.

“With Cub Foods closing, we just wanted to keep up with what we did last year,” Gibbons said. “Last year we filled three-and-a-half buses, and we made $2,200. I know we made around $2,700 this year, but we’re still waiting to hear how many food and item donations we collected.”

While they had originally planned for Cub Foods to participate in the event and even listed them as a location in their early advertisements, Cub Foods stopped stocking their shelves in late September, so the Stuff the Bus coordinators had to make the difficult decision to not include the store in the event.

“Cub Foods has always been a great help,” Gibbons said. “We’ve always been able to get so many donations from their customers; they’ve always been great. This year, we just had to hope that those people who normally go to Cub Foods would stop by another store to make donations.”

Gibbons said that despite having one less location, they gathered more donations than they thought they would.

“In the first year [of Stuff the Bus], they stuffed one-and-a-half buses and were so excited,” Gibbons said.

She added that over the years, the Ames community has learned about the event and now come to expect it in the month of October.

“The community knew about it; people knew it was going on. That shows that it is making an impact on the community.”

While Gibbons said the economy may have affected the number of donations Stuff the Bus collected in the last few years, she said she did not think it was an issue this year.

“There were people who could’ve gone in and purchased a couple of dollars worth of food, but instead they gave a $20 bill,” she said.

A little more than 200 volunteers from the ISU community helped make the event possible. People from the greek community to international student organizations and athletes participated.

Shannon Tan, sophomore in chemistry from Singapore, was amazed at the amount of support Stuff the Bus had.

“It was an eye opener,” he said. “This is my first time doing this kind of thing, and it is interesting to see how people donate freely to help others. It’s a new concept for me.”

He added that in Singapore he was a community leader and volunteered for many organizations, none of which were quite like Stuff the Bus.