The Season of Giving is Creating Change on Campus
School community donates food and money to Sacred Heart Community Service to give back to those in need.
By Bella Ramos-Khajavi
School community donates food and money to Sacred Heart Community Service to give back to those in need.
By Bella Ramos-Khajavi
As the holiday season approaches, Pioneer students have made great strides in the efforts to give back to the community. For the month of November, the service learning class, led by History Department chair Mike Burrell, held two Friendsgiving events: a pie-in-the-face contest and a canned food drive. The two events were held in hopes to help people in need during the holiday season and raise awareness for hunger in the community.
Money and cans were collected from Nov. 1-21 and, with the help of students and staff, they managed to raise a total of $447 for the pie-in-the-face event and 1,050 cans for the food drive to be donated to Sacred Heart Community Service.
Service learning student Ava Stansberry, 11, helped to organize the events on campus to bring light to hunger.
“The significance of the food drive being held on campus is to get students aware of the famine in our community and get the students involved in a friendly competition,” said Stansberry.
History teacher Peter Glasser, who was one of the participants in the pie-in-the-face contest, was very eager to participate in both events.
“For me personally, I just like being involved in Pioneer things and I know how hard service learning works to do all sorts of amazing things,” said Glasser.
World history teacher Darlene Dueck, another participant in the pie-in-the-face event and who also volunteers at food banks outside of school, thinks holding these two events on campus is a great opportunity to give back and help others.
“(Volunteering is) actually something that I regularly participate in and so when I saw there was a cause at our school, I (was) all for that. There are a lot of people that lack the funds to have basic groceries,” said Dueck.
Kaylah Ooka,11, who was one of the organizers of the pie-in-the-face event, believes that both events went well despite the workload of setting it up.
“It was certainly stressful, however I believe that the pie-in-the-face contest was a large success for service learning and those suffering from chronic hunger greatly benefited with the profits we received,” said Ooka.
Burrell recognizes that there is a great need in the community to combat hunger.
“We come from a very privileged or wealthy area so we don’t see it as much, but I think you see it with our homelessness and things like that so it’s just a good project that we should. There’s no reason we should have hungry people,” said Burrell.
Money and cans were collected from Nov. 1-21 and, with the help of students and staff, they managed to raise a total of $447 for the pie-in-the-face event and 1,050 cans for the food drive to be donated to Sacred Heart Community Service.
Service learning student Ava Stansberry, 11, helped to organize the events on campus to bring light to hunger.
“The significance of the food drive being held on campus is to get students aware of the famine in our community and get the students involved in a friendly competition,” said Stansberry.
History teacher Peter Glasser, who was one of the participants in the pie-in-the-face contest, was very eager to participate in both events.
“For me personally, I just like being involved in Pioneer things and I know how hard service learning works to do all sorts of amazing things,” said Glasser.
World history teacher Darlene Dueck, another participant in the pie-in-the-face event and who also volunteers at food banks outside of school, thinks holding these two events on campus is a great opportunity to give back and help others.
“(Volunteering is) actually something that I regularly participate in and so when I saw there was a cause at our school, I (was) all for that. There are a lot of people that lack the funds to have basic groceries,” said Dueck.
Kaylah Ooka,11, who was one of the organizers of the pie-in-the-face event, believes that both events went well despite the workload of setting it up.
“It was certainly stressful, however I believe that the pie-in-the-face contest was a large success for service learning and those suffering from chronic hunger greatly benefited with the profits we received,” said Ooka.
Burrell recognizes that there is a great need in the community to combat hunger.
“We come from a very privileged or wealthy area so we don’t see it as much, but I think you see it with our homelessness and things like that so it’s just a good project that we should. There’s no reason we should have hungry people,” said Burrell.