Blood, Sweat and Cans. Lots of Cans.

Our State Fair Fever has reached an all-time high! The crews installed Big Tex, Chili competitions began and the BRW Dallas team sweated through CANstruction Build Day.

1863 cans and 88 bags of rice were used to complete “Dr. Who’s Hungry” – an homage to the popular British Sci-Fi television show, Dr. Who. Using the Tardis, a space and time-travelling police phone call booth, “The Doctor” travels the universe helping those in need. Our Tardis transports a helping hand to hungry families through the North Texas Food Bank. “The theme of “Past, Present and Future” for 2016 in conjunction with our interpretation served as the lynchpin into designing our CANstructure,” boasted Team Captain Andy Okonkwo.

We even did a little time-travelling – after all, build day was a project five months in the making! BRW begins by hosting an Art Auction with pieces submitted by BRW employees, friends, and family members. These pieces are auctioned off to support the purchase of CANstruction supplies. This year, we were able to raise more than $1,400 towards our structure from Art Auction proceeds alone!

So after countless ideas, numerous meetings, an incredible amount of hard work and 3.5 hours in a building with the A/C turned off, stretching from a step ladder to carefully place the last can of corn on top of the 9-foot structure felt like a victory! It’s no wonder when asked about the experience, co-captain Taylor Jackson joked, “Well, the word ‘heroes’ is thrown around a lot these days…”

All joking aside, we really did have heroes helping out our team. CCM Construction, Denitech, and Clay Workman helped contribute to our cause and we can’t thank them enough!

While build day is in the past, and the finished structures are ready for viewing in the present, you can still help the North Texas Food Bank in the future! Take a minute to vote for BRW for the CANstruction People’s Choice Award – voting is done through donation online at www.ntfb.org/canstruction. $1 is equivalent to three meals and 100% of the proceeds go to the North Texas Food Bank.

The 2016 BRW Team consisted of Team Captains Andy Okonkwo and Taylor Jackson, who put a lot of extra effort into making sure everything ran as smooth as possible. Big thanks to all the additional help from Cory Durrant, Desiree Johnson, Sonya Shah, Carmen Torres, Matt Lorenz, Amelia Nguyen, Carol Kesler, Igor Draskovic, Renee French, Avi Patel, Micah Schneider and Edison Calvopina – build day wouldn’t have been as successful without you!