Students from Assumption College School (ACS) collected an estimated 25,000 pounds of food during this year’s Assumption Scares Hunger food drive, which was held on Wednesday, October 30, 2024.
A long running tradition, students in the school’s Grade 12 Social Justice and Equity class have been organizing the annual event now for over two decades.
“The main point of this class is to give back. At the beginning of the semester, Miss Torto broke us up into three groups which were Assumption Scares Hunger, Pennies for Heaven and Amplify Your Culture, and these are all initiatives that work to promote diversity, inclusion and giving back to the community,” said Tiffany Fischer, one of the student organizers for Assumption Scare Hunger. “When we first started this class, Ms. Torto told us, ‘if you don’t like helping people, this is not the class for you,’ and so everyone in this class is someone who wants to give back, make a change and make an impact.”
The ten students who organized the initiative said they looked back to previous years in order to see how they could build and improve upon what’s already been done before.
“This event has really developed over the years and different classes have always tried to add on to what was done in previous years,” said Neva Hoyt. “We used a lot of last year’s resources and tweaked some stuff, and then we really tried to go above and beyond, especially with the routes and stuff so that was one of the biggest changes we made. After doing all that work, it makes you realize how much actually goes into it, because we spent so many hours planning, running meetings, organizing the routes and stuff like that.”
In the week leading up to the event, all 350 student volunteers from various grades were assigned a route and given flyers to distribute to the community.
“Beforehand, we made flyers and we handed them out to about 8,000 homes,” said Danika Parasram. “Last year we had 35 routes and this year we had prepared 75 routes, so that was a drastic difference from last year. We basically covered all of the west end of the river, so all in this West Brant area, and even into Mount Pleasant and Burford too.”
In just four hours, the students collected over 25,000 pounds of food, far exceeding their expectations.
“When everyone went into the community to collect the food, our group stayed back and waited for everyone to return, and looking back, that was really the calm before the storm because then it was just chaos as everyone started coming back,” said Teresa Tran. “Once everyone came in, we actually had to go and get more tables to put everything on because there wasn’t enough in the cafeteria. The Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, who was our partner in this, provided us with 330 boxes to collect all the food, but we actually ran out and we had to get 200 more.”
Ma’ab Loffelmann, another student organizer, said they were all surprised with the variety of food and other items they were able to collect.
“We got things like sacks of potatoes, onions, beans, pasta, cans of soup, apple sauce, and honestly, a lot of peanut butter,” said Loffelmann. “But then we also got other things like feminine hygiene products, soap, little personal care kits, clothes and also money as well.”
After hours of organizing the items, looking them over and packing them into the boxes, Elissa Tchaptchet said the Saint Vincent de Paul truck had to make several trips to deliver the items.
“There were a lot of student volunteers and teachers that were in the cafeteria with us helping to sort all the food. The truck was literally filled to the brim for its first trip and then it had come back for another load as well, and we had to get another van to come and take the rest,” said Tchaptchet. “I know some of us were here until about 9:30 p.m. and the teachers were still here until around 10:00 p.m. because they were still loading, so it was a huge group effort to complete everything and it was really all hands on deck.”
Ella Vicano said that another improvement from previous years was that they were able to save a large portion of food nearing its best before date.
“It was great because we really tried to make sure that nothing got wasted and I would say, compared to last year’s event, we saved at least 7/8ths of the food that was close to its best before date,” she said. “All of the food that we collected will be going to Saint Vincent de Paul, the Friendship House and the Food Bank as well, so all of that fresh food or the food nearing the best before date, went to Friendship House because they’re really known for providing hot meals and so they’ll be using that sooner rather than later, but also the Food Bank got a lot of it as well.”
While the physical work of organizing and executing the event is over, Fischer said they’re now focusing on setting up next year’s class for success.
“The work is never really done, so in these final stages we’re taking everything we already did and looking at what went right and what went wrong, and then making a list for the future students to build on,” she said. “Now that the hard stuff is done, we’re focusing on what can be improved so the next group can supersede us and make it even bigger and better.”
Overall, their teacher, Ella Torto, said she was proud of the work her students accomplished.
“I’m very proud, 25,000 pounds of food is by far a new record. There’s a couple of things that you have to have for success and it’s the team that makes it work,” she said “Teaching this class gives me life and it gives me great joy, I’m incredibly proud of these students. These are Grade 12’s and it’s really time for them to get a chance to see what they can do for their community, right? They are incredibly powerful when they mobilize together and so it’s beautiful to see.”
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
