by Julie Gowel ·
Friday, December 20, 2024
Youth leaders at the Bromfield Middle School held a food drive in the first two weeks of December to support Loaves & Fishes, a pantry located in Devens serving the communities of Harvard, Ayer, Shirley, and other surrounding towns. When the official tally was completed, students collected 1,714.1 pounds of food.
The food drive was run by Bromfield’s Project 351 ambassador, eighth-grader Grace McWaters. Project 351 is a nonprofit organization open to students in grades six through 12. Every year, an eighth-grade ambassador is chosen from each of the state’s 351 cities and towns to spend a year leading service projects.
Bromfield’s Project 351 is responsible for such initiatives as clothing drives for Boston-based children’s nonprofit Cradles to Crayons, food drives for Loaves & Fishes, and smaller acts of service such as providing baked goods for the town’s first responders.
McWaters hoped to beat last year’s impressive food drive, but missed it by a mere 16 pounds. To achieve her goal, she and the other Project 351 members made posters that were hung every few feet in the middle and high school, set out collection boxes at Bromfield, Hildreth Elementary School, and the Harvard Public Library, went classroom to classroom talking about the drive and encouraging classmates to participate, and held a competition in the middle school.
“All the middle school grades are competing against each other,” said McWaters. “The grade that collects the highest weight in donations will get a prize. They can choose between a kickball game or a volleyball game, stuff like that.”
McWaters said she was most inspired by watching all the donations arrive at the collection boxes. “It’s something we don’t often think about, but there are a lot of people who are struggling with food insecurity,” she said. “We were actually learning the other day that there’s a lot of people that go to Loaves & Fishes, and I think something like 28% of them are kids.”
Faculty advisor to Project 351 and grade 8 English language arts teacher Cristin Hodgens said the students serve as her motivation for facilitating the club. “Food insecurity is largely an invisible predicament,” she said. “One of the things that we’ve always asserted in the food drive is that, ‘Everyone can be great because anybody can serve.’ That’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s direct quote. We emphasize that a lot of littles add up to a lot and that there’s a place for service in everyone’s life.”
The drive ran from Dec. 2 through Dec. 13 with the eighth-graders winning the middle school competition. Together, the grade collected 711.5 pounds of food. In second place were community donations weighing in at 445 pounds; sixth-graders came in third with 340 pounds, and seventh-graders with 211 pounds. Volunteers from Loaves & Fishes made multiple trips from Bromfield, bringing the donations to the pantry.
Members of Bromfield’s Project 351 pose with food items before dispersing to classrooms to gather more donations. Front row, from left: Amelia Kennedy, Morgan Smith, Emma Voute, Laurel Urquhart, Yana Li, and Lily Amkhamavong. Back row, from left: Ellie Nguyen, Colleen Davis, Grace McWaters, Avery Lohin, Sean Kim, Simon Iverson, and Cooper Baron. Not shown: Max Weiss, Blake Aftosmis, Lauren Gill, Mason Middelkeep, and Charlotte Mena. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)