People get together with family, go to relatives’ houses and enjoy delicious food alongside company. However, this year, more people will feel the impact of the season and might not be able to celebrate with a big Thanksgiving dinner, let alone food on the table at all.
The current government shutdown has reached an all time high count of 36 days. All food stamps and SNAP benefits have been stopped. People can no longer afford food for their families. As a way to help the community be able to receive food and celebrate thanksgiving OHS service club did a trick-or-treat food drive.
Members of the club spent time after school to go around town and distribute flyers around the school plus their neighborhoods. The service club started with a goal of 2000 pounds of food to give to the organization, People in Need of Delaware county. Students came in to help organize food and put them into boxes. And people waited outside for cars which came to drop off food. With all the hard work the service club collected 1879 pounds.
“Even if we were short of the goal, this food drive was still a success and something I was excited about was that we had a lot of volunteers this time” Teressa Adams, the advisor of the service club said.
“The food drive was really fun, this year I think we had a lot less expired cans and there were so many more volunteers. I’m excited for new volunteering opportunities. My fav event so far has been the food drive” Naya Damacharla Sophomore at OHS and member of Service club said.
Over the years the service club has grown bigger and better. This year they have had people at our school come to events. They started a sign up process to make sure they don’t run out of supplies for everyone to help out with.
“Some work that we have already done is working with the Stems for seniors program and PBJ helpers” Adams said.
The Organization Stems for seniors, finds events like weddings, parties and ceremonies that use flowers to decorate for the event and asks to collect donations of flowers and shrubbery that would have been thrown away at the end of the event. They then use these to create bouquets to give out to seniors at senior homes or when the food is delivered to seniors. The service club connected with them and has made over a hundred bouquets. They have also decorated cans for the bouquets, they plan to connect with the organization even more and are always open to donations of clean 15oz cans to collect and give out to the Stems for Seniors organization.
The other organization PBJ collects Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches in bulk from participants to give out to the communities who suffer through food scarcity. This was the first organization which coordinated with the service club for their first event. At the event they had a large amount of volunteer shows, so much so that they ran out of materials.
“This was my favorite event so far, making the pb&j sandwiches, I have always loved service club because you can earn volunteer hours while also having fun”. Mridulaa Rajgopalan, Sophomore at OHS and member of Service club said.
“This year has been great so far and we plan on many more events in the upcoming.Maybe even connect with other organizations. As well as give back to the community even more. And hope to continue growing the club,” Adams said.
