Fighting Hunger: A Student Crusade
Posted by Mary Richman on Thursday, November 11, 2010
On her college applications, high school senior Nicole Muller was asked to discuss an issue of personal, local, or national concern and its importance to her. For Nicole, that was easy. A year earlier, Nicole was moved to action by an unsettling article in her local paper.
“I found out that 30,000 people in the Charlottesville community need monthly food bank assistance. Naively, I had believed that hunger was reserved for remote places, but not my little corner of the world,” Nicole admits.
Since that day, Nicole has worked tirelessly to advocate for support of her local food bank. “I believe the way to end hunger is to realize that it’s everyone’s responsibility – it’s all about neighbors helping neighbors and students helping fellow students,” she says.
This year, Nicole, who locals refer to as the “Food Girl,” is adding to the previous efforts of her Neighbors-4-Neighbors program by challenging not only her school, but nearly 50 schools in her region, to help end hunger by participating in Schools Serve and the National School Food Drive.
School Serves, a new non-profit initiative that aims to bring all of America’s schools and school families together around the hunger cause, is proud to partner with Share Our Strength. By working together, we hope to give people interested in ending childhood hunger different ways to help, including taking the No Kid Hungry pledge, hosting a Great American Bake Sale or organizing food drives in their schools and neighborhoods.
With traditional local food drives as the starting point, Schools Serve will also facilitate the creation of hunger committees at schools to work year-round on tackling hunger issues at the school and community level. Schools see the effects of hunger every day and are well positioned to rally their communities around the cause.
“I joined Schools Serve because I believe that by working together with schools across the country, we’ll all have a greater impact locally and nationally,” Nicole stated. With the support (planning tips and promotional tools) Schools Serve provides to schools, Nicole believes that their goal of 5 million pounds of donated food is easily achievable. “Never underestimate the power of a connected and determined group of teenagers!” While her college essay and inspiring story will surely stand out from the rest, Nicole hopes she’s not the only senior writing about hunger. “It is an enormous problem and I’ve worked for over a year to individually encourage donations of over 45,000 lbs of food. Just imagine what will happen when millions of my fellow students join the national movement and pledge their efforts to end hunger.”
Hopefully - no kid hungry.
November 11, 2010 | 0 comment(s) | Tags: food banks, hunger, no kid hungry, schools
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