Cheney Middle School leadership students aid food bank

Each year, the seventh and eighth-grade students in Cheney Middle School teacher Sherrie Syrie's leadership class undertakes a project to help out a local organization.

Leadership student Camryn Bishop said this year they kicked around a number of ideas, including helping at an animal shelter, but decided in the end that local really meant "local."

As in the Cheney Food Bank.

"We decided on a food drive," Bishop said. "We wanted to help and they are in the local area."

Morgan Hayes said they undertook a number of activities in order to get the entire school involved. Besides putting boxes in each classroom, the students also made and put up posters and sent messages to classes encouraging them to contribute.

Syrie said the leadership students also gave speeches about the need for donations as well as made announcements to the school as a whole.

"It was very easy and it was very slick," Syrie said. "Our goal was 1,000 cans."

They got more than that from the drive that ran from April 23 – May 4. All total, the class collected 1,400 items ranging from cans to boxes to sacks of dry goods.

"The other classes, there was a lot of response," Hayes said. "It showed that a lot of other students want to help out too."

"We were happy we met our goal," Bishop added.

The nine students loaded a Cheney school bus with 52 boxes of foodstuffs on Friday, May 25, and made the short trip downtown to the food bank located in the lower portion on the Third Street side of the city's Wren Pierson Community Center. There they were met by food bank president Jerry Stewart and volunteer John Matthews, who helped them unload and provided instructions on sorting similar items into boxes for more efficient storage.

Matthews said the food from the middle school was welcome, coming close behind another drive undertaken by employees at Cheney's Post Office that brought in over 2,200 items.

John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.