A group of students at Rundlett Middle School recently launched and completed a successful food drive called “Just One Can.” The idea was to have every student, all 1,100 of them, donate one canned good for the New Horizons soup kitchen in Manchester.
The students are part of the 3R program, which guidance counselor Eric Penniman says stands for “Reality, responsibility and re-education.” He adds that the program “was developed to meet the needs of a student population that requires a more restrictive educational placement in the middle school.”
We wanted to know more about these young do-gooders, so we sent Eric some questions. He and the students worked on the answers.
How did the idea for the food drive come about? We wanted to help those who were in need during the holiday season. We realized how fortunate we were to have food during the holidays and we wanted to help those that were not as fortunate as us. So we came up with the idea of starting a school-wide food drive called “Just One Can.” We asked all the students of Rundlett Middle School to donate “just one can” of food to our food drive. If we did this, then we would have over 1,000 cans.
When did you get going with the project? We started the food drive two weeks before Thanksgiving with the hope that the holiday season would help other students realize that we could help those who are in need and who are less fortunate than we are.
What did the kids do to get involved? We made and decorated boxes for other students to leave donated food in. We also made posters and announcements to advertise our food drive. We placed our decorated posters and food boxes all throughout the school so students in each part of the school would see them. Every morning we would check each and every box and collect the food and bring it into our classroom where we stored it.
How did the partnership with New Horizons soup kitchen come about? We contacted numerous local soup kitchens and received a message from Horizons stating its need for food. We thought this would be the ideal soup kitchen to donate to, one that was in desperate need for donated food.
Where did you put all those cans? We put all of our donated cans in a big cabinet in our room. Every day we would pick up the cans in our donation boxes located around the school and we would bring them to our classroom to store them until our food drive was over. Once the food drive was over, we contacted New Horizons soup kitchen to come and pick up our donated cans. We took the cans out of the cabinet in our classroom, counted them and helped New Horizons to put them on the truck. The New Horizon workers that came to pick up our cans could not believe how many cans we were able to donate. Our can total was over 1,000!
Is there anything else we should know about? The students of the 3R program would like everyone to know how hard they worked on this “Just One Can” food drive and that this was completely volunteer work that they had to fit in with their school work, sports and other daily activities. The students of the 3R program also wanted to mention how proud they are that they were to be able to represent Rundlett Middle School, as well as make a positive impact on their community by helping those who are in need.
