Members of the Seven Arrows kindergarten class led a food drive.
What can a small group do to help the community?
Just ask Seven Arrows Elementary kindergarten students and they can tell you that they were able to help collect almost 11,000 food items that were donated to the Westside Food Bank on November 19.
The youngest students in this K-6 private school (located on La Cruz and on Haverford) came up with the idea to help supply food for those who were in need: they didn’t want to see people go without food on Thanksgiving.
Then kindergarten students, with help from the staff, went one step further: they challenged the school’s older students to a week-long “canned food challenge.”
Seven Arrows Coach Colin Thomas explained, “Competition between the grades creates good teamwork and pushes the individual to do better, and feel better about themselves.”
Each day of the week was designated for certain food items that the Westside Food Bank had requested as essential items, from canned pasta sauce and pasta, to juice, cereal and stuffing.
Students went to the store each day with parents to purchase the item, but more importantly a discussion followed about how that item might help a family in need.
“My favorite was buying the cereal,” one kindergarten student said.
“I liked bringing in the juice, because I love juice,” another said.
A third student added, “I liked delivering the cans and seeing how many we collected. We collected over 300 canned veggies.”
Students learned that “It’s what we should do to take care of our neighbors, it fills you with happiness when you give,“ said Brenda Cowdrey, Director of Operations at Aldersgate, the current K-2 campus.
“This donation to the Westside Food Bank is all the more meaningful because the idea originated from our youngest students,” said Seven Arrows
Enrollment/Marketing Director Fiona Farrahi. “They came up with this challenge, completely unprompted, and thought of a way the whole school could get involved. Our Kindergarten students really embodied one of our core Seven Arrows this week: citizenship.”
Two U-Haul trucks filled with 10,692 grocery items collected in one week were delivered to the WSFB.
The food, which was collected during a drive orchestrated by Seven Arrows kindergarten students, was delivered to the Westside Food Bank.