Kids collect food for needy

By KIPP HANLEY
Published: November 15, 2008

It's Operation Turkey time of year, and Prince William County schools are among the many groups with a mission to collect food for the needy.

No one school took that mission more to heart this fall than Rosa Parks Elementary School in Dale City. In total, students at the school collected 53 boxes—or 880 linear feet—of canned goods and dried foods for Action in the Community Through Service, which sponsors Operation Turkey.

According to school program coordinator Terri Faulkner, it took 10 adults more than an hour and a half to box up the food. There was so much, ACTS had to make two trips to collect it all.

Leading the way was M.E. Akers fifth-grade classroom, with more than 120 feet of collected food. It was a proud moment for Muna Muhidin and all her fellow students knowing that less fortunate families would not go hungry because of their efforts.

"I was thinking about some of them, how the look on their face would be," Muna said. "How maybe they would feel really happy."

Cameron Smith said he didn't want to donate just any food. He wanted them to have stuff he liked like tomato soup, juice and cereal.

At one point during the two-week collection period, the class got almost too competitive, said Akers. At stake was an ice cream party—and the competition was fierce between Akers' class and K.J. Cabacar's fourth-graders.

That's when she told them to close their eyes and imagine they had just come home from a tough day at school, opened the cupboard door and discovered no food was on the shelf for them to snack on.

That moment provided some perspective to what they were doing.

"All of them opened their eyes and said, 'what?'" Akers said. "And I said that's why we are doing this. Some kids go home and they have nothing."

According to ACTS Food Pantry Coordinator Mike Hinz, nearly all of the schools on the eastern half of the county participate in the program as well as area Boy Scout troops.

Last year, ACTS was able to feed 1,800 families and Hinz said this year's amount of food could come close to last year's.

"It's going to be pretty close to last year and that's surprising with the economy being like it is," Hinz said.

Staff writer Kipp Hanley can be reached at 703-878-8062.