FARMINGTON – Class after class of Mallett School children trooped down to the community center today, with plastic bags bearing a gift of food.
The Helping Hands Food Drive was held today. An annual tradition, students at Mallett School and Cascade Brook School collect nonperishable food and bring them into class. Then they walk the supplies to the center, for eventual transport to the Care & Share Food Closet in Fairbanks.
Today, only the Mallett students walked food to the center, as the rain cancelled the Cascade Brook event. Instead, those supplies were loaded onto a truck for eventual sorting. Retired teachers and students from the Diversified Occupations Program at the Foster Regional Applied Technology Center doing the sorting prior to delivery to the food closet.
According to MSAD 9 volunteer coordinator Pauline Rodrigue, 116 boxes of food was collected. Using an average weight multiplier of 40 pounds per box, that’s well over 2 tons of food for the Care and Share Food Closet. “The results of the Helping Hands Food Drive were impressive,” she said and added, “this is a wonderful community project that benefits so many people in need.”
