Bear Creek food drive brings in six and a half tons of food

The school’s National Honor Society chapter organized the drive and the food was donate to Hopelink.

By Stephanie Quiroz • November 21, 2019 8:30 am
Photo courtesy of The Bear Creek School Bear Creek National Honor Society students from left, Kate McDonough, Chuck McDonough, James Wadhwani, Tyler Doyle, Benjamin Ferreira, Kathryn Sutherland, Ryan Bracewell, Nelson Sun and Annemarie Mullet delivered food donations to the Hopelink food bank in Redmond.
Photo courtesy of The Bear Creek School Bear Creek National Honor Society students from left, Kate McDonough, Chuck McDonough, James Wadhwani, Tyler Doyle, Benjamin Ferreira, Kathryn Sutherland, Ryan Bracewell, Nelson Sun and Annemarie Mullet delivered food donations to the Hopelink food bank in Redmond.

To help the hungry in Redmond, The Bear Creek School’s chapter of the National Honor Society (NHS) recently sponsored a food drive.

Students school wide participated in the food drive and together, they collected 12,932 pounds of food. The 6.5 tons of food was donated to Hopelink’s food bank. NHS has sponsored the food drive for more than 15 years.

According to Bella Hayton, president of the chapter, the planning process began a month before the drive. Each chapter member signed up for different jobs and worked together on the “massive project.” The food drive ran from Oct. 28 through Nov. 1. To encourage donations, NHS decided to sponsor a contest and one class in particular delivered 2,268 items (more than 48 items per student). Each year the goal is to collect five tons and this year the students exceeded that goal.

“It was great to see everybody working together and everybody having a good time helping the community,” James Wadhwan, NHS historian said.

Izzy Teztor, NHS vice president, said it’s important to bring awareness to these types of topics. Teztor said the chapter held an assembly-type event to talk about the issue of hunger and raise awareness for the food drive.

Hallie Reichel, NHS co-adviser, said the students’ accomplishment was incredible.

“I was just blown away by the level of organization that it takes to run such a large food drive and to do it all within a week,” Reichel said.

The Bear Creek NHS chapter takes on a different big projects, according Linda Graham, the chapter’s second co-adviser. She said many of the projects have been a tradition and the food drive has been one of those traditions.

According to Hopelink, about one in seven people (13.7 percent) in Washington state do not have reliable access to a sufficient amount of affordable and nutritious food. To help those in experiencing food insecurity, Hopelink has provided 2.23 millions meals, with 13,998 clients receiving food assistance in 2018. In addition, 240,741 pounds of fresh food was collected through the organization’s harvest program. E

Editors note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the date of the food drive. The food drive ran from Oct. 28 through Nov. 1.