Northwood placed third in the inaugural Thanksgiving food drive competition among all five IUSD high schools from Nov. 11-15.
Northwood students donated 1,006 of the total 4,488 canned goods collected district-wide at the SAC. All of Northwood’s proceeds were sent to Families Forward, a nonprofit supporting the homeless. Northwood also extended donations for an additional week to continue its annual Advisement canned food drive competition, which was won by math teacher Ann Nguyen’s advisement.
Although Northwood lost to Woodbridge, with 1,125 items, and University, with 1,042, students still found the competition to be a nice way to give back to the community.
“The competition is a really good way to generate more support, fundraising and public awareness about this canned food drive,” sophomore Hannah Bae said. “I think it’s really cool that some of my friends, even from other schools, can participate in it because it’s a district wide event.”
To help publicize the event, each school’s ASB decorated their donation bin and had students vote on the best one. Northwood’s Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup bin came in second after Woodbridge.
The campaign was also publicized by NTV, the school bulletin and social media posts to boost student participation. Communication between all ASBs was a major factor in publicizing the drive, according to Northwood ASB president senior Lily Ye.
“We’ve delegated tasks, so community commissioners are in charge of making it clear what is happening and what to donate,” Ye said. “For publicity, they’re the ones that are publicizing all these different posts and making sure that everyone has a say in this kind of event.”
Although this was the first intra-district Thanksgiving competition, Northwood ASB hopes to make this a new tradition across the schools, while also aiming to improve the timing and distribution of information for staff in future years.
“It’s important that we’re donating cans and necessities during the holiday season, especially if these people don’t usually have access to that kind of thing,” Ye said. “In the future, it will be a lot easier to start earlier and have a bigger, better effort going towards the drive. Ultimately, year after year, it can grow, be more creative and foster more donations as well.”
