Recent Food Drive Finds Great Success

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Jasjit Hargun

From November 27th to December 13th, a food drive was run across the town of Andover in Andover High School, Wood Hill Middle School, and Phillips Academy Andover. This drive was in collaboration with Project 351, a non-profit organization that aims to eradicate hunger in all of Massachusetts's 351 municipalities. The drive raised 236 pounds of food, and donated it to two food pantries in Lawrence: Bread and Roses and the Merrimack Valley Food Bank.

The drive was organized by Nathan Ramani, a freshman at Phillips Academy and member of Project 351. He assembled leadership teams composed of his friends in each of the three schools. This strategy decreased the burden on Nathan, and also allowed everyone to contribute their own ideas to running the food drive. For example, an infographic video was created to detail the purposes of the drive and how everyone could contribute. 

Project 351, as mentioned above, is an organization that strives to end hunger across the entirety of Massachusetts. They do such by organizing food drives, clothing drives, and other charitable events. However, they realize that they won’t be able to end hunger by themselves. So, all of the events that Project 351 organizes are also used to teach people generosity and how to run drives of their own. Project 351 organizes its members into three groups: staff, ambassadors, and alumni. The staff are the adults who run the organization, and create the events that the other two groups participate in. The ambassadors are eighth graders who participate in the events and run drives with Project 351 in their local areas. These ambassadors are the ones that Project 351 aims to teach, as they are old enough to run community service events, but young enough that they still have open minds and plenty of time to make an impact. After one year, ambassadors graduate and become alumni. These alumni are still able to help Project 351, and are sometimes expected to teach the ambassadors lessons, or give advice on how to run effective drives.

However, it’s not just ambassadors and alumni that can help. Although Nathan organized the team, everyone had their own reasons to help. Some of these included the feeling of giving back, how people’s faces light up, while others were inspired by those who gave back before them. Everyone had their own reason, but we all came together because of this noble cause.

This drive alleviated pressure on the two food banks. It especially helped Bread and Roses, who had a 1000% increase in demand this year. With many causes, such as the housing crisis and high inflation levels, more people this year have needed help than ever before. This drive, along with many other holiday season drives, are helping to keep everyone fed. 

The drive also had another key role: it was the first event organized by the Andover Service Initiative. With this first project, we learned what to do and what to avoid for the future. Not only that, it brought us together as a team, and was the first step in establishing a foundation for all of our future projects. 

Of course, we aren’t the only ones who can do things like this. Anyone, no matter where they are, can work to improve the lives of those around them. It doesn’t have to be a food drive, it can be anything from a large community-changing project to cleaning the trails on a local nature reserve. What matters most is that people are making an effort. This effort goes on to inspire others to also put in effort, and soon, we’re all working together on one goal: to end suffering, whether it be in our local communities or across the globe. We hope that we can be the ones to inspire you to make a change.