ThisWeek CW 06/11/2015

http://www.thisweeknews.com/content/stories/canalwinchester/news/2015/06/08/students-end-the-year-with-successful-food-drive.html

Canal Winchester Middle School students pulled together for one final good deed before heading off for summer vacation — an end-of-year food drive for the Community Food Pantry and tour of the Mid-Ohio Foodbank.

On May 26, nearly 100 students toured the Mid-Ohio Foodbank to learn more about hunger in central Ohio and how they could help. After the tour, the students spent two hours walking through Canal Winchester, distributing 2,200 bags that had donation instructions as well as a message in memory of their classmate, Brock Johnson, who was a supporter of the food pantry and who died the week prior before the food bank tour after battling an autoimmune disease.

“Brock Johnson passed away after we had already completed assembling our bags,” teacher Kelly Best said. “The students insisted on going back and hand-writing #brockstrong on nearly every single one of the 2,200 bags. That’s pretty awesome.”

On May 27, the students returned to collect more than 6,000 items, which were all donated to the Community Food Pantry.

“With 100 students visiting 2,200 houses, we had over 28 volunteers from all over serving as their chaperones, as well as our partnerships with the city, the school administration, Walmart, Home Depot, Meijer and the sheriff’s department, working as the students covered essentially the entire city,” Best said. “Thank you to everyone who helped us pull this off; we could not have done it without you.”

Canal Winchester Human Services Administrator Penny Miller said the planning and logistics necessary to make the project a success were executed almost flawlessly.

“As the bags they collected become too heavy to carry, the students were able to leave them in piles along the road and the city’s road crew, school district staff and the sheriff’s department came through to help collect the donations and move them to the Community Food Pantry,” Miller said.

The students were treated to a lunch break at the Frances Steube Community Center before heading to the pantry, where they unloaded, sorted, counted and helped shelve the donations they collected.

“I have never seen an undertaking like this and do not know of any other community in central Ohio that has done anything like it,” Miller said. “This group of kids has done several projects this year to support Canal Winchester Human Services and they are ending their year with a huge finale.

“It is another shining example of how Canal Winchester students understand the need to give back to their community. I could not be more proud of our youth and the goodness they continue to project.”

Throughout this past school year, Canal Winchester Middle School classes have been working on the issue of hunger. The school year began with the Football For Food campaign, and the classes’ efforts resulted in collecting double the number of items in previous years, according to Miller.

Over the Christmas holiday, the students held bake sales resulting in nearly $1,500 in Simply Give cards, which were then matched by Meijer, donating nearly $4,000 that was used to purchase food for the pantry.