Student Contributor -C. Hernandez
My 4th grade students raised 71 items to donate to 2nd Harvest. The students were able to help the community fight hunger. They were able to understand the concept of helping and how we ourselves can make a difference in our own community.
After students learned about 2nd harvest and the importance of civic engagement projects, it was time to make a goal of how many nonperishable items we wanted to raise. My 4th grade students made a goal to raise 130 items to donate to 2nd Harvest. They agreed that if each student brought five items we would reach our goal. Every time a new student would bring in some items we would count and write down the number up in the white board to keep track of how far we were from reaching our goal. Before we could begin our food drive, we discussed of what items were appropriate to bring. The students discussed that we couldn’t bring milk, chips, candy etc. because these individuals that were in need of food needed healthy food. The students raised a total of 71 items to donate. Once we finished the food drive, I took the items to 2nd Harvest to donate them. This project was a service to the community, because there are many students and families that don’t know where their next meals will come from. The students knew that the items donated would be given to students that needed meals because 2nd Harvest partners up with schools and communities with a program called Bite 2 Go. This programs supplies food to students that many not have food during the weekend. On Thursday’s a bag filled with healthy food is sent home to students that are in need. You could see the happiness on my students faces when they saw a bag filled with healthy items being delivered to one of their own classmates. It was powerful for the students to see their contributions make a difference.
I was very pleased with the way this project turned out. Even though the students didn’t reach their goal of 130 items, they tried their best with the time we had. The food drive was only about 4 weeks long, it was from May 1st to May 24th. My advice to others would be to do the project for more than 4 weeks. I would also advice that if you’re doing this with older students, you could have the students volunteer at 2nd harvest and help sort the food. They would be making the bags filled with healthy food that get distributed at many schools in Spokane WA.
My class and I also completed a food drive to 2nd Harvest. My placement school is in a very urban part of Spokane, in a somewhat impoverished area. They were a class of about 21 students. The issue with the school drive in my case is that a vast majority of the students at my school come from low income households, so a lot of them could not afford nor had the resources to bring in canned food. I explained to my students the importance of contributing to your local community to help everyone thrive. They all agreed that it is important to do what you can to help everyone. One thing I like that you did is incorporate a goal for a certain amount of cans per student. That is a good way to make it more personalized for them. One thing I would try to incorporate if I were to do this again is a class prize if a certain goal were met. I think that you had a good structure. Another thing I would try to incorporate is a sense of competition among different classes to see who could bring in the most cans. That way students could become more involved and personally take initiative to complete the challenge. I do think that if I were to do another civic engagement project with these students, I would incorporate some kind of class project or craft they could do that wouldnt involve them spending money or their parents using what they had to donate as they already have so little.