Nancy Ho (MechE 1T4), Engineering Society’s Community Outreach Director, wanted to find a creative way for engineering students to give back.

“So that’s when I found out about CANstruction,” said Ho. CANstruction, which was held at Simcoe Place on November 5, is a design competition that challenges the Toronto community to build structures out of canned goods. The structures are on display for a week, before being donated to the Daily Bread Food Bank.

As if the challenge at hand wasn’t already difficult enough, Ho and her team of engineering students decided to build a structure inspired by Angry Birds. With the help of a $1,000 donation from one of CANstruction’s sponsors, the team was able to purchase more than 1,000 cans.

“But that wasn’t enough to build it,” said Ho, “So we ran a food drive at U of T with the help of the Engineering Society and Professor Susan McCahan (MIE, Vice-Dean, Undergraduate).” The team managed to collect 1,700 cans in total, and successfully built their ode to Angry Birds, which stood alongside three other structures created by Ryerson University teams.

“I’m so proud of the work we did,” said Ho. “It was a big project, a cool idea, and we managed to pull it off for a good cause. It’s community outreach at its finest.”