“We helped 192 families Saturday, and could not have done it without NREVSD students and staff,” said Melinda Graser, president of the New Richmond Food Pantry. “More than 350 children are included in those 192 families.”
New Richmond High School led the way with a record 11,439 food items.
NRHS student council president Emily Smiddy (center right) and vice-president Myla Gordo (center left) are surrounded by volunteers from student council and Deron Shinkle's advanced drafting class who helped load the record 11,439 food items collected for the New Richmond Food Pantry.“The high school student council would like to thank everyone for their donations to the food drive,” said NRHS student council adviser Jim Robinson. “In only 13 days, we collected 11,439 items including $1311.06 in monetary donations.”
Terri Flamm's physical education class set an all-time overall record for a class with 2896 items; John Callebs’ math class collected 2419, and the special education classes along with the office staff, graduation academy, teacher academy and library collected 2093 items. A combined effort by the classes of Sue Griffin and Jaime Kipfer collected 1895 items.
“We had a goal to top our previous record of 6975 and we easily topped that by over 4400,” said Robinson.
All New Richmond buildings reported donations of more than 1000 items with Locust Corner Elementary collecting 2479 items, Monroe Elementary 2194 items and New Richmond Elementary 1600.
More than 50 volunteers, including present and past students of the New Richmond High School and members of the New Richmond Liars Club, helped deliver, sort and box the food items which were distributed on Dec. 18 at the American Legion Hall in New Richmond.
“The volunteers filled 210 boxes and what we didn’t give out to the 192 families will go on our shelves for distribution for the rest of the month,” said Graser, who is the building secretary at New Richmond Middle School. “The schools probably contributed 95 percent of the items we will give out this year. A tremendous thank you to everyone.”
The New Richmond Food Pantry is in its 30th year. Other Pantry officers are Tom Marck, vice president, and Sonia Kroger, treasurer.
NRHS students (from left) John Channels, Dominic Steelman and Jacob Crooker take a break from loading the 11,349 food items onto a truck supplied by Duke Energy for transport to the New Richmond Food Pantry. (Photos by Jim Robinson)
