Every year, Gateway’s Student Council holds a food drive for low-income families in the four sending towns. Most people hear about it but don’t really understand what it’s truly about. It begins the week before Thanksgiving and runs throughout December. The food is gathered, organized, and distributed a few days before winter break begins.
Originally, it was started by Mr. Howard and the NHS program as an annual service project. However, it was taken over by the Student Council and has been run by Mrs. Evans and Mrs. Genzano for over a decade now.
Every year that students have helped with it, it has been a fan favorite project among those in Student Council. It’s an opportunity for the students involved with Student Council to be hands-on with a project, instead of just being there.
In order to get a variety of food for struggling surrounding families, different grades have different assortments of foods they are assigned to collect. Freshmen Morning Meetings aim to collect boxed stuffing, mashed potatoes, canned corn, peanut butter, jelly, salt, and instant oatmeal.
Sophomore morning meetings should encourage students to bring in canned green beans, cream of mushroom soup, pancake mix, syrup, and jarred pasta sauce.
Junior students are encouraged to bring boxed Mac and Cheese, boxed cornbread, granola bars, rice, cereal, pasta, and canned fruit.
Finally, Senior morning meetings should try to collect canned cranberry sauce, turkey gravy, apple juice, canned fruit, garlic powder, and olive oil. While this is what is recommended to get a diverse group of foods, all food is welcome — if you have something to bring in, bring it. Before bringing in any goods, check the date on it to ensure it is still in date.
After the collection of items is over, some members of Student Council will take a trip to ShopRite to purchase fresh food. This includes eggs, butter, ham, milk, and more. It’s important that families in need can provide for their families during Christmas and beyond, and that’s why they are given an abundance of fresh and shelf-stable food. If we have any spare shelf-stable food, it gets taken to the Food Pantry located in the 100 wing, where you can always donate food.
November and December are months for giving to others and helping those around us, so if you can donate even a couple of items to the Food Drive, please do. It benefits those surrounding us, our four towns, and the lovely families within them.
