They filled that bus--20 buses, to be exact

Last Friday marked the end of the Hamilton City Schools District-wide food drive. It's the first time that an entire school district has come together to do a food drive for Shared Harvest, and it was particularly well-timed. Most organizations like to capitalize on the spirit of Thanksgiving and Christmas and conduct their food drives during the holiday season (as Alex and I know very well). But what about the months that follow? Hunger doesn't end with the holidays, and food pantries often have a difficult time keeping their shelves stocked after the new year.

Hamilton City Schools took all of this into account when designing their "Hey Big Blue, Fill That Bus!" food drive. The district-wide drive included 15 district buildings, as well as a few community locations like the YMCA in Hamilton. Alex and I delivered the initial barrel + 25 boxes to each school, office, or community center back in January, and each location easily filled that and more. The goal was for each school to fill a school bus with 88 boxes of food, and five of the schools ended up filling two buses. In fact, one little boy at Ridgeway Elementary in Hamilton collected 2,284 non-perishable food items alone. That's 40 boxes worth of food, or about half a bus, all by himself!

It seems that everyone really got into the food drive, incorporating assemblies and incentives for the kids to collect food and give back to the community. Check out the lengths a group of teachers took at Van Buren Elementary school to rally students to collect more food. I find their show particularly fitting, given the project.

At the end of the food drive, students at the Hamilton Freshman School unloaded the boxes from the convoy of 20 buses that transported the food from each school. Before it was all over, they had filled the semi-truck, the straight truck, and Gus the Bus to their maximum capacity. How much food is that? More than 60,000 pounds of food and personal hygiene items. That's more than the entire 2009 Holiday Aid food drive combined. Check out the photos snapped by Greg Lynch of the Hamilton Journal-News.

We are so impressed by the compassion of the students, faculty, and staff of Hamilton City Schools. I hope that next year other school districts will consider getting involved in a similar effort, maybe even in competition with each other! Who says that rivalries have to originate on the football field or basketball court? They should spring from food drives, too.