The students at Elmira’s Park Manor Public School have been digging through their pantries at home to help the less fortunate.
The school’s student council turned their food drive into a bit of a competition between classrooms, and the need to win seems to have paid off. Collectively, the school collected 1,377 non-perishable food items to donate to Woolwich Community Services’ food bank. The school has also entered a region-wide contest organized by the Kitchener Rangers to see if they can collect the most food as a group.
“We had Mr. Noodle Monday, so the kids bring in any type of noodles, Tuna Tuesday, meaning any type of canned goods, Warm-up Wednesdays, so soup, hot chocolate (and so on),” said Jen Wiens, Child and Youth Worker at Park Manor.”We tried to use some of the items that the food bank said they needed, but also to have fun with our students. What we are (did) was fill a hockey net in our hallway to coordinate with the Rangers.”
Wiens says that along with have a good time competing between classrooms and other schools, the drive highlighted the importance of helping those in need.
“It is just to make them aware that there are needs within our community,” she said. “In most of our students’ lives, they are very fortunate enough to not have to use the food bank, and it is just a great community cause.”
The student council ran the drive, with the help of Wiens, even with ongoing labour disputes across the board. They will find out if they won the contest later this week.
