With a little help from their friends, 14 teams from local schools are competing in this year’s Canstruction competition. Last year’s Canstruction event generated 71,747 pounds of food, making it the eighth largest event in the world!

Canstruction is sponsored by Community Harvest Food Bank of Northeast Indiana, Inc. in conjunction with the host, Glenbrook Square Mall. Approximately 250,000 visitors experience this unique week-long event and help determine which structure should win the People’s Choice Award. Each can donated counts for one vote, and cans will be available to purchase at Community Harvest’s store front located across the hall from Barnes and Noble.

This year’s Canstruction theme is Cartoons. With 14 teams, the characters vary greatly. For example, classic cartoons make their appearance with entrants such as, Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh, and Scooby-Doo. However, not to be outdone, contemporary cartoons are also represented; Nemo, the Transformers and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will make their appearance as well.

The 14 competitors for this year’s event include two teams from Blackhawk Christian High School, Canterbury High School, Carroll High School, Central Noble High School, Concordia Lutheran High School, DeKalb High School, Eastside High School, New Haven High School, Northside High School, Northrop High School and New Tech Academy at Wayne High School. Also competing are St. Elizabeth’s Middle School and Towles New Tech Middle School.

Students begin the building process Friday morning, April 15th and race against the clock to build their structures within 12 hours. A panel of judges will review each structure Saturday morning, April 16th. This year’s panel of judges include: Robbie Mack, Brand Manager and Radio Personality for HOT 107.9, Rhys Jones, Mechanical Engineer for Multimatic Indiana, Bill Hoover, COO of Community Harvest Food Bank, and Michelle Ferro, Miss Three Rivers Festival. The structures will then remain on display at Glenbrook until Sunday, April 24th.

Following the completion of the event, all canned goods are collected by Community Harvest and distributed for hunger relief in Adams, Allen, Dekalb, Huntington, LaGrange, Noble, Steuben, Whitley and Wells counties.

On behalf of Community Harvest and all of the participating teams, we would like to thank our sponsors for this event: Strahm Building Solutions, Heartland REMC, Brotherhood Mutual, Engineering Resources, Felderman Design-Build, Five Star Distributing, Salus Research, AT&T, Therma Tru, AT&T Pioneers, Primary Engineering, Lowes, and JAT Fort Wayne.