Wareham High School food drive collects more than 3,000 items for food pantry
Nov 24, 2021
A selection of the food items collected by Wareham High School students. Photos courtesy: Michelle Medina
By combining the annual food drive with the school’s Spirit Week, the Student Council and Key Club were able to leverage the classes’ competitive spirit. Ultimately, more than 3,000 food items were gathered for the food pantry.
As part of the school’s annual fall food drive, Wareham High School students collected more than 3,000 non-perishable food items for the Family Pantry at Damien’s Place.
The drive ran from Wednesday, Nov. 17 to Tuesday, Nov. 23 — the same timeline as the school's Spirit Week.
“Each fall, the Key Club organizes a food drive, and this year, when Student Council was starting to plan Spirit Week I suggested to the kids that we should include the drive as a part of our Spirit Week this year with the hopes of collecting more items,” said Michelle Medina, the advisor for Student Council. She said the kids were “super excited” about the idea and decided to combine the events.
In total, Medina said the students collected 3,282 items for donation.
During spirit week, the grades compete with various events to earn points, Medina explained. The class with the most points at the end of the week wins.
The events include things like dressing up for theme days, penny wars and, this year, participating in the food drive.
“For the food drive, students earned one point per item they brought in,” Medina said. “Then each day, there was a specific double point item, so that if they brought in the specific item, they would earn two points per item instead of one.”
She said the students — particularly the juniors and seniors — were “super competitive.”
“Each day, students brought in cases and cases of items,” Medina said.
She noted that going into the last day of Spirit Week, the juniors had a 21-point lead over the seniors, “so the seniors went all out.”
“Students were bringing in laundry baskets and totes full of cans, making two to three trips back to their cars for more,” Medina said. “On Tuesday alone, we collected 1,800 cans.”
In the end, she said the seniors “pulled it off” and came out on top with a Spirit Week win.
Medina said everyone was impressed by the outcome.
“It was absolutely amazing,” Medina said. “We never imagined collecting over 3,000 items, but we are so excited to be able to give back to the community that continually supports students each and every day.”
