Students help fill Valley shelves

A Greenacres Middle School student said his own good fortune encourages him to help those in need.

“I’m just grateful I don’t have to go to the food bank or worry about food,” said Jacob Amini, 14, as he stood outside the Liberty Lake Safeway during the annual Fill the Bus food drive.

Greenacres, Horizon, Evergreen and Bowdish middle school students fanned out at Valley grocery stores on Saturday to collect food for the Spokane Valley Food Bank. At each location was a traditional yellow school bus with boxes of food and frozen turkeys stacked inside. Later, the buses would be driven to the food bank to be unloaded.

The donations will be used to fill more than 840 requests from families for Thanksgiving food baskets. The surplus items will stock the shelves in anticipation of the Christmas holiday.

“I think it’s great we can help these people in need,” said Amini, an eighth-grader.

The Spokane Valley Food Bank considers the schools’ drive vital to helping the families they serve.

“Oh for sure,” said Margaret Patterson, the food bank’s board president. “The schools bring the largest portion of food.”

Last year, the Central Valley middle schools contributed more than 50,000 pounds of food.

The four middle schools collected canned foods throughout last week. Greenacres’ bus was more than half full with 3,080 cans of food when they arrived at Safeway about 9 a.m. Saturday.

Greenacres’ principal spurred the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders on last week by fostering a competition among grades and with an additional challenge – to fill his office so full of food that he couldn’t work in it.

“My office was packed,” said Vern DiGiovanni, called Mr. D by the students. “It was challenging to get the door closed on Friday.”

It’s the fourth year Greenacres Middle School has participated in Fill the Bus. Each year the school has brought in a little more than the previous year, the principal said.

“Community involvement is a big part of school these days,” DiGiovanni said. “I think giving back to the community is always important. There’s nothing like feeling like you helped someone else out.”

Bowdish Middle School collected grocery items with the same sentiment throughout last week – to aid those in need – but a class competition wasn’t part of their inspiration.

“As we said on our announcements each morning, it’s the right thing to do,” said Liz Wardsworth, a Bowdish teacher who helped organize the school’s food drive. During the week, the students’ efforts filled her Dodge Caravan twice, from top to bottom, she said.

Taylor Martins, a sixth-grader, said she went through her parents’ cupboards searching for items to donate to the food bank.

“I threw in a creamy corn, because I like creamy corn,” Martins said.

The young girl appeared enthusiastic about spending a couple of hours at Tidyman’s Supermarket on Saturday with fellow classmates in order to collect additional food.

“I work at the food bank, so I knew it would feel good to be here too,” she said.