Friendly Classroom Competition Brings Blessings to Community

With the holiday season coming up, two LaRue County High School teachers and their students gave the gift of food, driven by compassion and friendly competition.

Katy Cecil’s class decided to go toe-to-toe with Hillary Copley’s class to see which one could provide more support to a no-cook food drive for Warm Blessings Community Kitchen.

“I had seen a post on social media by one of my former students, Cecelia Madrigal, who explained that the people the community kitchen serves often need shelf-stable food they can carry around and eat right out of the can,” Cecil said.

That social media post sparked the need to give, but Cecil wanted to let competition drive more of an impact.

“When we took the donations to Warm Blessings, Cecelia, who serves as the Warm Blessings Donations Coordinator, told us that it was the single largest donation of no-cook food the kitchen had ever received,” Cecil said. “She was overwhelmed and told us that it made it extra special that the donation had come from her alma mater.”

The two classrooms collected over 300 donated items and over $1000 in donations.

The food drive also impacted students, many of whom connected their in-class discussions to meeting the needs of the LaRue County community. Cecil’s classes had discussed statistics and first-person narratives surrounding homelessness and the impact that a lack of resources has on someone. Copley’s classes had started reading John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” a classic American novel that unpacked the themes of poverty on working people.

For many students, putting together food for the classroom challenge was also a way to learn more about the community. Students got a hands-on taste of the price of food and how much buying power it takes to sustain inventory at a food pantry to meet the needs of a community. They learned about similar organizations and how grants and donations can keep those organizations funded.

Most importantly, pointed out Cecil, they learned empathy and how important it is to be engaged in the community so they can identify needs and help to address them when they can.

“It felt really good to do something nice for the soup kitchen. I had no idea that place even existed or that there were so many people that need help,” said student Isabell Farmer. “Now I know, and I hope I can keep helping people get food when they need it.”

When Cecil and Copley delivered the food goods to Warm Blessings, they were met with overwhelming gratitude.

“We had lots of help carrying everything in, and over and over the people kept saying, ‘Thank you so much,’ or ‘Tell your students we said thank you,’” Cecil said. “When everything was in, the food covered three cafeteria tables and every person waiting in line for dinner wanted to talk to us and thank us personally. I just wish we could have had some of the students with us when we went. It was a powerful experience.”

If your family, organization or workplace would like to coordinate your own giving efforts with Warm Blessings, visit their website a warmblessings.org.