Eager to give back to their community, these Grade 12 Cambridge students started a food drive
Grade 12 students Aya Javed and Havanna Druiker hope other schools will be inspired to do the same
A group of students at Southwood Secondary School, eager to give back to the community, were busy Friday tallying food and funds collected during a week-long food drive for the Cambridge Food Bank.
Grade 12 students Aya Javed and Havanna Duiker were behind the campaign.
"Going around town, you can notice that we do have quite a bit of a homeless population, just going through an intersection you'll usually find someone with a cardboard sign," Javed said. "I think as a community we should work toward fixing that and that was one of the biggest reasons why I wanted to make this food drive happen."
Duiker said it was important to involve the entire school community to give students a chance to give back and to maximize donations for the food bank.
"The food bank runs on donations, so involving the entire school [and] the students having a way to get involved, was very important for this food drive," she said.
The campaign launch took the pair about a month to plan. In that time, they were able to recruit volunteers and reached out to the food bank to see what foods they were most in need of.
"The food bank was very much in need of sandwich spreads, such as peanut butter, but we have also been collecting money donations or canned meat and fruit," Duiker said.
Support has been 'overwhelmingly positive'
Javed said the response and support from the school community has been "overwhelmingly positive."
"It's so heartwarming to see that as a school we've come to a common ground regardless of our interests, we have been able to come together for a common goal." she said.
She and Duiker hope other students follow in their footsteps and create their own campaigns to give back to their community.
"We hope that this sets the stage for other students and other people in our community to create their own kind of food drive or their own event," Duiker said.
"We're hoping this encourages more of that effort."
Sounds of the Season is our annual holiday fundraiser in support of The Food Bank of Waterloo Region. Our goal is to raise money, donations and awareness for those facing food insecurity in Kitchener-Waterloo.