PERRY TOWNSHIP, Ohio (WLIO) – A group of junior high students is making a direct impact on childhood hunger in Lima.
For the second time this year, Perry Junior High’s student council collected food and money for Spread the Love, a Lima-based nonprofit that distributes peanut butter and jelly sack meals to kids in food-insecure neighborhoods. The group collected grocery items and cash — enough to provide 375 meals, which will cover nearly four weeks of service to children in need.
“This is what we do. This is what we function with, is the donations. So, a donation of this size keeps us going, it fills our pantry. It means that there are almost 400 kids that can be fed a peanut butter and jelly sack meal to alleviate their hunger after school,” said Laurie Camper, program director for Spread the Love.
“As a student council, we truly enjoyed raising profits for Spread the Love last year and wanted to continue working with the local charity to provide meals for the children in our community,” said Starla Kohler, student council president at Perry Junior High.
“It means a lot, especially when we learn more about Spread the Love when we talk to Laurie and learned about how many of the neighborhoods that they service are within the Perry community, they're in our school district. When we talk about it with our students, the number of them who have seen the vans go through their neighborhood—so knowing that we’re having a direct impact, not just on kids in general but on our kids that we get to work with every day—it’s so important to us that we get to give back to our own kids,” said Patricia Brown, student council co-advisor at Perry Junior High.
Perry’s student council says they are looking forward to holding another drive in February.
