Brighton High School Food Drive is a Success

The annual NHS Food Drive kicked off Wednesday, November 8th at Brighton High School by the National Honor Society food drive committee. The yearly food drive ends late November after Thanksgiving.
Donations for the food drive go to feed families at Gleaners food bank in southeast Michigan. Last year, Brighton High School raised about $10,000 in cash and about 1,000 cans of food. This is equivalent to each student contributing 20 meals.
The NHS food drive committee started preparing early October. The co-chair leaders Senior McKenna Sabon and Senior James Stanzel are helping to get the committee and school pumped up to reach their goal of $10,000.
In order to be prepared they met the first month of school having meetings every Wednesday morning before school started at 6:45am until the food drive began.
“During the meetings we organized our goals for the food drive, set up the videos to show the students, gathered donations from different companies and businesses in the community,” Committee member David Delisle said.
While preparing, the committee also took the time to volunteer at Gleaners for a day to help out. They also did a milk drive earlier in the year at Busch's and raised $1,000 to go towards the donation to Gleaners. In order to complete their mission, they paired with the Gleaners in southeast Michigan branch which helps people in our local community.
“Our mission is to try to help the hungry in our community,” Committee member Andrew Gilpin said.
Last year, Brighton High School won the eighth annual Mountain Food Drive competition between all Detroit-area high schools and received $5,000 to go towards the NHS survivor week prizes and incentives for raising money. This year they are hoping to be reigning champs as well as even beat the winning amount from last year’s champs.
One of the main reasons BHS has been able to raise so much money is due to the competition in the school. They have decided that the fourth hour class that raises the most money for the food drive will get a lunch party hosted by local restaurant Salsarita's. As well as, the classes second and third place receive a pizza party.
Reining champion teacher Kimberly Davis plans on winning the fourth hour class drive again this year. This not only helps students and teachers to have an incentive to raise the most money, but it brings the entire school together overall.
Also, in order to reach their goal and complete their mission they made some improvements from last year. They first created more appealing videos and showed their volunteering at Gleaners to help pump up the school. In the videos, they also made sure to play on the competition to motivate teachers and students.
Overall, the food drive has been put on each year by NHS for more than 10 years. It’s very important to the high school and the community DeLisle, Gilpin, and NHS advisor Sean Carney agree.
“In general, people need to realize how fortunate they are, be thankful for what they have, and take advantage when the can give back to others,” Carney said.