By

Chad Vincent,   Bannockburn Elem School

Play:

Fight Hunger — Help Nourish Your Community

Topics:

Access to Healthy Foods, Community Involvement, Student Leadership,  Teamwork

Hey FUTP 60! This year, our team hosted our first ever Soup-er Bowl food drive which ended the same time as the Super Bowl. Our team wanted to have more community involvement this year and complete the Fight Hunger- Nourish Your Community Play. Our team set up a competition between classes to bring in items for our local food pantry. Our food drive lasted over a month and ended with our team collecting over 450 items to donate to the Deerfield Food Pantry, which is located 30 minutes north of Chicago. Our team met after school on a Tuesday at the food pantry and delivered the food items while also spending 45 minutes unpacking, stocking shelves and organizing the items by type. It was a great experience for our team and certainly eye-opening to find out nearly 90 families visit the pantry every week.

How did students and adults work together as a team?

Our students and teachers worked together to set up the donation area and help organize days to add the event to the morning announcements. We also packed up the cars together and met at the pantry to work together in helping our community. This ultimately was only able to work if the adults and students cooperated.