Emily Wong (’20) generously donates a cream of mushroom soup can to help a family. Photo by Elise Tranby Elise Tran, Staff Writer
Fountain Valley High School (FVHS) Peer Assistance Leadership (PAL) is collecting canned goods and donations so that 35 families are able to have a Thanksgiving feast.
PALs teamed up with Community Career Leaders of America (CCLA) and Robin’s Nest to create a Thanksgiving food drive for families of students that rely on schools to provide their breakfast and lunch. About 15 to 20 students will be directly from FVHS.
Teachers were notified by email about the cause and donations and for those who chose to participate had a specific food item that their class could donate to and approximately 30 to 40 teachers participated.
Their goal is to collect as many canned goods and donations as possible that can supply the families for the week. There is a variety of food items to collect such as corn, cream of mushroom soup, roasting pan and more. The donations will be given to the families so that they can purchase perishable food items.
“My goal is at least 25 [dollars for each family], but if we could do 50 [dollars] that would be amazing,” said ceramics teacher Joanna Jones.
The deadline for the donation is Nov. 10, which gives PAL, CCLA and Robin’s Nest enough time to pack boxes for each family. Currently, they are working on getting turkeys donated. If that goes through, they still have to plan how they will store and donate the turkeys.
They are also still working on how to give the donations to those families while keeping the families anonymous to respect students’ privacy.
PAL and CCLA is hoping to continue this in future years including a winter break food donation. The difference between winter break and Thanksgiving is they must provide two weeks worth of food for the families. CCLA is also helping to create meal plans and give recipes to the families during winter break.
PAL is hoping to make an impact on not only the families, but also the students of FVHS. They hope that people start to see the difference they can make for their fellow classmates.
“We’re hoping that long term, we start to create a community here that has a bigger picture of helping each other and helping the world, more specifically helping our community,” said Jones.
