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Fitch Interact Club sponsors food drive
Photo
Neighbors | Shaiyla Hakeem .Austintown Interact Club members Sammi Devenport (front left), Ahmad Muhammad, Christine Holmes, Brandon Rivello; (back) Zared Bell, Mandy Srhneider and Jason Miller donated more than 1,800 nonperishable items to the Mahoning Methodist Church April 26. Tina Kubacki (front right) and Gary Reel are the club advisors.
By SHAIYLA HAKEEM
Fitch High students collected hundreds upon hundreds of non-perishable food items for a local charity in April.
Fitch’s Interact Club sponsored a spring food drive for the Mahoning Methodist Church bringing in more than 1,800 non-perishable food items.
Interact Club senior Eric Crawford initiated this activity which he hopes will become an Interact Club tradition. His motive behind the drive is linked to the Feinstein Foundation, a national organization that is continuously working to alleviate hunger.
Each year, the foundation grants $1 million to divide amongst community charities that apply for the grant. Crawford wanted to help local charities receive as much money from the foundation as possible. A spring food drive seemed like the most plausible answer.
For the drive’s recipient, the group had to decide between the Second Harvest Food Bank and the Mahoning Methodist Church. Since they held a Thanksgiving drive for Second Harvest, the church was the best candidate.
Donation boxes were spread throughout the school and were collected each Wednesday and Thursday. A raffle was implemented toward the end to encourage student participation.
Each non-perishable item a student brought in would be traded for a ticket. Prizes such as gift cards, Fitch paraphernalia and candy baskets were up for bid. The donations were delivered to the church April 26.
Interact’s Christine Holmes, who is also an active member at the Mahoning Methodist Church, said the donation saved the church money.
“Because of the donation, about $200 was saved from what we would usually buy on food,” she said.
Other activities, other than food drives, sponsored by Interact include volunteering at the Rescue Mission every fourth Monday of the month, roadside clean-up twice a year and paper recycling each week.
“If I had to guess, we probably recycle about 200 pounds of paper a week, that’s quite a bit of paper that we save,” Crawford said.
The club is a junior division of the Rotary International and is open to all high school grade levels. Crawford joined Interact Club as a freshman because he saw something unique and special about the mission and motivation of the organization.
“Interact Club was probably one of the ones that I like the most because it was very down to earth, very hands-on and it had a tangible experience to go with it,” he said.
Crawford graduates this year and said he has enjoyed his time with the club. He wants Interact to continue to enrich the community through its service and implement his ideas in the years to come.
“Because I really liked Interact Club, I decided to put forth my ideas and hopefully establish a stronger base on what they want to do and what they may do in the future,” Crawford said.