When the officers of the Monte Vista High School Interact Club learned that food donations to the Contra Costa Food Bank had fallen off drastically after the holidays, they decided they needed to help. They asked Food Bank volunteer coordinator Joan Thomassini for 18 food barrels to be brought to the school, and club members distributed them to classrooms around the campus. When she called after the Food Bank had collected the barrels, she asked, “Are you sitting down?!?” In only a few weeks they had collected over 2500 pounds of food!
This active service club, sponsored and supported by the Rotary Club of Alamo, has spearheaded at least 2 major service projects a month since the beginning of the school year. They began the year collecting backpacks filled with school supplies for needy students in Contra Costa County. Additional collections included warm coats for the homeless, Halloween costumes for Bay Area Crisis Nursery toddlers, handwritten holiday cards and gifts for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the “adoption” of 80 children from the Crisis Nursery for whom they bought holiday presents and clothing. The club held a “Hoop-a-thon” last month, shooting baskets to raise money for HydrAid, an Interact/ Rotary-sponsored project to provide sand filters for clean water to villages in underdeveloped parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Still ahead are projects to raise more money for this water-purification project, sorting food for the Food Bank, and serving meals to seniors.
This is certainly a caring, committed group of teens!
