Bear River’s annual participation in the canned food drive has started up once again this November, and every student can make a difference.
The canned food drive typically begins in early November and lasts until the end of the year to help provide a Thanksgiving or Christmas meal to people dealing with financial hardships, homelessness, or just people who are alone for the holidays. The canned food drive is motivated by a simple desire to help people.
Bear River Senior Zoey Moody is in leadership, and also holds the title of president of the Interact Club, making her one of the most motivated supporters of the canned food drive.
“This is a super fun chance for people to help out their community, I hope people get really fired up to help this year,” she said.
The Bear River Interact club provides cardboard boxes to Leadership students, all of which are delivered to every teacher’s classroom. Teachers’ third period classes are encouraged to bring in as many cans as possible. Each class has a chance to win a pizza party if they manage to collect the most cans.
Some teachers at Bear River have been offering extra credit in their classes for cans brought in by students, but English Teacher Toby Barmeyer said that she doesn’t think it should be so hard to convince students to get interested in the canned food drive.
“In my opinion, donating canned goods to those in need should be something students want to participate in out of the goodness of their hearts, and not because it impacts… grades,” she said.
The cans will be delivered to the local food bank in Auburn once the food drive and competition are concluded at Bear River, though cans will continue being collected for the food bank by other organizations until the end of 2019. Students have until Friday, November 15th to bring cans into their third period classes before they are collected by Leadership and the winning class is decided. The deadline was extended from a previous date of Wednesday November 13th, so students need to take this chance to get in all the cans they have!
The motive for the organizations that run these drives are the goal of helping people in unfortunate situations. It can still be a struggle for some people to help out if they don’t have cans of their own to donate, or if they need the cans themselves. However, there are other ways to help out.
Food Drive organizations such as The Food Bank of Nevada County accept donations for the purpose of meal purchasing. A donation of only one dollar will provide small meals for four people, so even small donations are widely encouraged. This is a chance for all students to be a souperhero, and make somebody else’s life just a little better. Organizations such as these are also always accepting volunteers, which is a great chance to get involved in the community.
Junior Sean Huska said that he thinks that students often aren’t interested in the drive, and getting a lot of cans donated may be difficult
“I think it would be super cool to get a pizza party, but It doesn’t seem like anyone else in my class cares enough to try and get more cans than what they already have in the house,” he said.
Generally, students at Bear River this year said that they don’t think that their peers care as much about the canned food drive as they used to.
“Well first off, we have a smaller student body than previous years, but I also think that people aren’t as passionate about participating in school activities,” said Sophomore Sam Evans.
Any participation is greatly appreciated by those who will eventually receive the cans, and donating canned food is a great way to get into the November spirit of gratefulness before Thanksgiving.
