Food drive brings out best of CF efforts

Senior Beau Andersen boxes some third period donations for the food drive.

Once again, like each year, our student-driven food drive has come, impacted many around the high school and in our community and flown by quickly with all the fun activities.

By holding this food drive, CF schools take a great step toward ending hunger in Northeast Iowa, and Black Hawk County specifically. Currently, 13.8 percent of Black Hawk County is food insecure, 17.2 percent being children. This U.S. Department of Agriculture defines food insecurity as a lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life.

It is sometimes hard to believe that people around us, specifically in the high school, are food insecure when we have so much food surrounding us, and at our fingertips as it might seem, but some only know they are getting breakfast and lunch, which comes from the school. What about the weekends or breaks? One may not be able to see these struggles that are happening right here in our community, but that is another benefit of the food drive. Not only does it feed thousands of people, but it educates the people who may think they are not affected, but may just know someone who is food insecure.

Helping out does not mean spending all one’s time and money on the food drive. That’s another great thing about the food drive: helping a little, helps a lot. Donating $1 means four people will be fed. The food drive offered so many great activities that did not require students to devote their whole schedule to, like the Chick-fil-A event. Buying your dinner there meant others got fed as well.

If you feel like you missed out on a great opportunity to feed lots of people that may just be close to you, you haven’t. The Northeast Iowa Food Bank is always welcoming volunteers to help sort donated food for families. Also, on top of the Northeast Iowa Food Bank website there is a button where you could click “donate” and change the lives of multiple people. To learn more about how we are impacting Northeast Iowa, visit https://www.northeastiowafoodbank.org/.

The lessons we learn from this food drive don’t have to end when the food drive does. It is necessary that throughout life we be aware of injustices and insecurities throughout the world. A major lesson to take away from this food drive is never get too comfortable in your life; always be willing to extend a hand.