For students at the Center Street School, the Town of North Hempstead’s “Food to Feed” program and an existing county program to provide wrapped snacks to people in need has been an opportunity to help that has taught them an important lesson.
“It feels really good,” said fourth grader Michela Richards, one of the leaders of the school’s service club. “Helping someone is something special to me because if someone helps me it would make feel really happy.”
The Center Street Service Club has been participating in the county’s “Rock and Wrap It Up!” program since last year, encouraging their schoolmates to participate by putting up posters around the school, handing out flyers and speaking to their fellow students in class to build awareness for the program.
“Once a week, we asked if people could bring an extra snack so kids less fortunate than us would have something to eat,” Richards said.
Last week, the Town of North Hempstead distributed new food bins decorated with the logos of the New York Giants football team and the New York Mets baseball team to initiate its “Food to Feed” program in partnership with the existing county effort. The “Food to Feed” collection bins are currently in all of the schools in the Herricks School District. They will soon be delivered to schools in the East Williston, New Hyde Park- Garden City Park and Sewanhaka School Districts as well, according to Fran Reid the town director of environmental planning.
The Center Street initiative was sparked last year by a parent who suggested the school’s participation in “Rock and Wrap It Up!” as her son’s bar mitzvah project, according to fourth grade teacher and service club counselor Janine Gentile.
Some students had school lunch snacks they would have otherwise discarded as trash. But the food buckets started filling up quickly as kids also brought wrapped snacks and canned foods from home. The school also started saving hot lunch food that was left over and donating it to the St. Aidan School Food Pantry, Gentile said.
“They service anyone in our areas that need it,” she said.
The students demonstrate a mature awareness of the purpose sending snacks and leftovers to the food pantry serves.
“It’s helping other kids and families that don’t have enough money to buy food,” said fourth grader Ayesha Patel, another service club leader.
Ed Bellomo, Center Street School principal, said the food collection program is intended to imbue values of compassion in the impressionable youngsters.
“We work hard to raise their level of awareness. If you build that level of awareness when they’re young, it will stay with them,” Bellomo said.
Extending the idea of filling the food buckets for those less fortunate, the school recognizes students as “bucket fillers” for other acts of compassion as well. For example, if a student is injured while playing during recess and another student assists them, that student’s picture is posted on a “bucket filler” board in a school hallway.
“If you help someone who’s hurt, you’re helping them,” Richards said.
Bellomo said it’s part of the character-building aspect of the educational experience at Center Street.
The students clearly grasp the concept of what it means to be extending a helping hand to others.
That’s the message that the Town of North Hempstead hopes to convey.
“Beyond the benefits of environmental conservation, the basic program with all its various components will send a message that when we all work together with a common purpose, we can effect significant change. In this case that translates into helping feed the hungry,” said Town of North Hempstead Supervisor Jon Kaiman.
