Meramec students and staff participate for charity
By: Joe Makoto
-Staff Writer-
Summer proved to be ‘successful’ for the food drive at STLCC-Meramec, collecting over 1,500 items for Circle of Concern and Kirk Care.
“We fed 500 more people this July than last July, that’s significant because we usually feed about 2,000 people a month. So we were up about 25 percent in July,” said Sada Lindsey, pantry director for Circle of Concern. “July is traditionally our slowest month, so the fact that we had 2,500 people is alarming to me.“
Meramec faculty and students who took part in the summer food drive on campus helped meet the growing need for donations.
“When the drive ended, we had 1,554 items,” said Debbie Corson, project assistant for the Office of Service Learning at Meramec. “We had to really make a push this year, last year the drive only collected 420 items.”
Corson said that this year new tactics were needed to improve results.
“We made posters that were more emotionally engaging,” Corson said. “We put a child on every poster. We used an idea that someone at Wildwood had come up with. That was to put the signs in the bathrooms, and it seemed to really make a huge difference for us this year.”
Lindsey said that the summer is especially hard on children.
“We feed a lot more children in the summer because they don’t have access to the school lunch program,” Lindsey said.
“When they’re not getting those meals, it really stresses the family budget,” Corson added.
Several classes were active in the drive, each donating over 150 items to the cause according to Corson.
“There were about five or six professors that gave points for cans, and they also talked about the drive in their classroom because of that, that made a huge difference,” Corson said.
“We really appreciate the teachers taking the time to work it in their lesson plans,” Lindsey said. “Each one of those classes donated over 150 items,” Corson said. “That helped a lot with the drives.”
Corson said the food drive got off to a rough start with close to nothing collected in the first week.
“Actually, the first week I sent out an announcement, I was really blunt, ‘We’ve received nothing this week.’ After that we got a bunch of people starting to be really engaged in it,” Corson said.
The Circle Of Concern is seeing more business from new clients, Lindsey said.
“We’re seeing newer clients, who had full-time jobs, who were doing just fine, and who had lost those jobs,” Lindsey said. “I know we gave out 4,000 bags of groceries just last month. We’re so fortunate that we’ve had friends in the community.”
Lindsey said students and faculty will not have to wait for the fall food drive to donate to the cause.
“When we’re open, we’re accepting donations,” Lindsey said. “[Students] raised a lot more food this year. Which was fantastic because we needed a lot more food this year. The community has really stepped up.”
