Every year the Student Council club commits themselves to give back to the community.  They gather together and encourage students to donate food for local places which they will donate to families with needs. The canned food drive teaches the students to show compassion for their fellow man and provides a service for our community.

    It is unknown who or when this activity was introduced, but Stacy Roeming, ex director of the activity, and Kristol Carter, current director of the activity, believe that StuCo brings leadership and a positive impact to this town.

   “The students are gaining great leadership skills in participating in the different community service projects we are involved in throughout the year.  One main quality gained with this particular project would be generosity.  Helping the local families in need takes a caring heart,” Carter said.

   “Hopefully, the canned food drive reminds students to invest time and energy toward helping others in need. Many kids are unaware that something like food shortage can affect fellow kids and adults within their own community. Our goal has always been to engender a sense of community service or selflessness within the hearts of our students so that when they become contributing adults in society, they carry through with a helpful hand to neighbors within their community. We want our kids to have a generous spirit, a serving heart, and a concern and regard for the well-being of others. It’s unfortunate that sometimes involvement only happens when kids are offered some reward. At this age, kids don’t always look beyond themselves at those friends and people around them who may be hurting or in need of help. Though I know it’s part of the age and the experience of being a teenager, a stage if you will, it concerns me that some will potentially never be truly concerned about others,” Roeming said.

    There is one thing for sure and that is StuCo students get motivated to perform this activity from the Student Council State Conference.

  “It is a popular philanthropy that falls under the Community Service Committee. We get new ideas from SCSC every year,” Roeming said.

 “One of the challenges that the club faces is getting people to donate and be informed about it.”

  “Much of what I could figure out from kids is that the students didn’t know about it because we were no longer delivering spoken announcements anymore and students don’t read the announcements. When teachers get involved by offering incentives like homework passes or extra points, we usually have a large number of responses,” Roeming said.

 “The challenge we faced this year was getting the students motivated to donate canned food items. This year we held a raffle drawing.  Each day there were three winners. We gave out cash, various gift cards and movie tickets. We’ve also thought about offering extra credit in classes to motivate the students to donate canned food items,” Carter said.

  This year the club held the canned food drive in January and plan to make a goal for next year.

  “Approximately 200-300 cans were donated this year. we did not set a goal this year but that would be something we would like to do in the upcoming year,” Carter said.