The Student Council at Ecole Morden Middle School were recently busy organizing a food drive that brought in 3500 lbs. of food for Many Hands Resource Centre in Morden. 

Alli Wiens is a Grade 5 teacher at the school and one of the teacher supervisors of the student council.  

"Student council members are grade five to eight. There's a representative from each homeroom class. They decided to do a food drive to support Many Hands. We've done it in the past, and it was really successful, and they wanted to do it again this year.” 

The Student Council made posters and spread the word. The children brought in food to their homeroom classes and on the last day, all donations were brought to Wiens classroom to be sorted, boxed up, and then taken to Many Hands. 

“The whole school was really excited. Everyone kept looking in my classroom. It was incredible. I have a pretty big classroom and it was really full. We had four trucks and a car full with boxes of food. We were all blown away.” 

Wiens said the children’s eyes were opened through the project. Some children had never heard of the food bank.  

“We had some good conversations in the classrooms. It was an easy entry point for families and for kids to feel like they were helping and donating. Itt was great to raise awareness of things that are going on in our community.” 

Many Hands was grateful for the donation from the school. Wiens says that although each student had a small part, it turned into a big thing. 

“We've already talked about doing it again next year. It's just a really neat thing for middle school kids to be involved in the community.” 

Listen to the full interview with Ali Wiens and Connie Bailey by clicking on the link below.