School food drive delivers good timing for short-stocked food pantry
By Megan Moseley
March 24, 2008
Alexander High School’s honors senior government class collected 1,500 cans of food over the past two weeks, and it couldn’t have come at a better time, said the local Salvation Army’s service unit manager, Madge M. Stewart.
The Salvation Army in Athens has a very small budget that depends on donations and what’s available at the Second Harvest Food Bank in Logan. Lately, the struggle to find food for some local families has become increasingly difficult, she confirmed, and the Second Harvest Food Bank has had more difficulty this year than in the past.
The random donation was desperately needed, and the Alexander students have really helped the Salvation Army, she said.
“We get our food cans from the Second Harvest Food Bank, and the shelves there are extremely bare,” Stewart said. “The problem is if they don’t have enough food, then we can’t get food for people down here in Athens. It’s really great that we have people locally that are so generous.
“We have a lot of people needing help these days,” she added. “Families with working parents still need our support, and it has become a challenge to find enough food for everyone.”
The generosity started after Alexander High School senior Molly Smith, co-chair of the food drive, decided to donate a few food cans to the Salvation Army after hearing the organization was struggling from Bonnie Tenney, food service manager at the Salvation Army. Upon receiving a thank-you letter from them after she donated, Smith said she felt it was time for her class to get involved.
“I was so impressed by them after they sent me the letter,” Smith recalled. “I started thinking, if they are willing to take the time out to write me a thank-you letter, then my school can take some time out to help them more.”
Smith was required to do a community service project for her honors senior government class and felt as if the food drive would be perfect for it. She talked to friend and classmate Laura Shimko, co-chair of the food drive, and both Shimko and Smith decided to organize the drive so it would include all the schools in the Alexander Local School District.
Smith and Shimko said they really wanted to organize this event so it wasn’t around Christmas when just about every other school in the county hosts a food drive.
“A lot of schools donate around Christmas and Thanksgiving and then stop,” Smith noted. “But what the Salvation Army needs and what other organizations like them need are consistent donations. So we planned it over Christmas break but waited until afterwards to host the food drive.”
After reviewing plans for the drive, Joel Laufman, who teaches the senior government class, agreed to the project idea. Laufman said it was a great idea for a community-service project, and he helped inspire students to donate by giving them a little incentive — extra credit per can donation up to 20.
Laufman and other teachers really helped get the school excited about the food drive, Shimko said. The staff was supportive, and even if some students didn’t bring in cans, the staff tried to and make up for it by bringing in their own cans.
Shimko said the organizers tried to think of other ways to encourage their fellow students to donate, and came up with the idea of soliciting donations from local businesses for prizes to award food donors.
The winning homeroom classes in the various grades will receive a pizza party, and the teacher of the winning classrooms also received a prize, she said.
“Local businesses were more than glad to donate and help local consumers,” Shimko said. “We received donations from places all over Athens and it really helped to have a lot of support.”
Although the prizes helped boost the food drive, Smith said she noticed a lot of the support came from the lower grade levels whose motive was simply to help the cause.
“What I found most inspiring from organizing the food drive was just how willing the younger kids were to help out,” she said. “Each day kids from the elementary would be holding arm-fulls of cans. Mrs. Bobo’s kindergarten class brought in so many cans that their overall number was equivalent to that of the entire high school.”
Shimko also recognized the generous donations from the younger students and said it probably has something to do with their priorities compared to those of a teenager.
“Most kids in high school are busy thinking or doing other things so it was hard to get their focus,” she said. “It was difficult to get a lot of the kids in the high school enthusiastic about the food drive.”
Overall, Shimko and Smith said they were pleased with the results but not completely satisfied. Both students said it was amazing to see how much people really care about local issues, but they think it could have been better.
“I hope that by us doing this event that other schools and teachers will encourage their students to get involved,” Shimko said.
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