MHS ANNUAL FOOD DRIVE
Food drives take on a much greater importance when the hunger being addressed takes on a human face.
Just ask Messalonskee High School senior Colby Charette.
Colby, Messalonskee’s student body president, met one of the hungry through the Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Mid-Maine program. He talked about the experience in front of his classmates at the recent Student of the Month assembly. He told them about one of the girls in the program who was upset about only getting one snack because she knew she would have no meal when she got home that evening.
“She said her stomach hurt from pain because she was so hungry,” Colby said.
That’s the human face of hunger – young children who go to bed at night with empty stomachs.
And that’s the reason Colby was so adamant at the assembly that this year’s food drive be more successful than last year’s effort, a campaign he described as disappointing.
“We need to start now as individuals a movement every year – $2, two food items,” he said, “And if you have more, give more. Please.”
Colby said 80 students at Messalonskee suffer from food insecurity, meaning each day they cannot be certain they’ll have enough food to prevent hunger.
But that insecurity, Colby said, can be reduced by participating in the food drive, which is under way and features a competition among advisory groups to see which can raise the most money and can goods – a Big Dog pizza from the Korner Store goes to the winning advisory.
“So if there’s one thing I want you guys to take away from this,” Colby said in his parting remarks, “it’s the Number 2 – every time you hear it, two dollars or two food items.”