Highland Park Students Provide Needed Groceries To Local Families

HIGHLAND PARK, IL — Local high school students teamed up with educators during the stay-at-home order to help Highland Park and Highwood families struggling to afford necessities.

In April, Highland Park High School senior Charlotte Harrigan called Northwood Junior High School eighth grade teacher Ida Fiore, co-founder of Service and Learning Together Student Travel, or SALT, to ask what the group could do to help support local families in need.

"I noticed that there was an issue with my peers, my community members, neighbors, everybody around me wasn't as fortunate as I was to be able to have my parents go to the store weekly," said Harrigan, who had previously attended service-learning trips with the nonprofit.

Fiore, a Highwood native and Lake Forest resident, said the SALT Serving Safely volunteer projects the group has launched since the April conversation have received key support from several local businesses, who have donated space and supplies, and the Rotary Club of Highland Park/Highwood.

"We have been going about it day-by-day and people have stepped up," Fiore said. "What I'm most proud of is: this community has supported it. Because it's a grassroots effort and it takes about $2,000 a week to feed the families."

SALT's co-founder is former Highland Park High School Principal Brad Swanson, now the assistant superintendent for human resources at Glenbrook High School District 225. He said the group used its mailing list and network of contacts to generate a list of families in need.

"That was essentially just an informal network — families that knew families or relationships that our own students had," Swanson said. "We reached out to any family and said, 'We don't mean to presume anything negative but are you interested in being part of this program and can we help you in any way?' and all of them said, 'Yes.'"

Harrigan said the first two weeks were devoted to learning what the local families needed.

"We actually learned that a lot of families weren't able to get to the Moraine Township [Food Pantry] and so that when we were like, 'OK we're going to do food and we're going to do paper items,'" she said.

Dubbed Shop N’ Drop, the project launched May 2 with 25 families and grew over the course of the following 18 weeks.

As of Saturday, it had delivered 3,644 bags of groceries to 110 families over 18 weeks. A total of 182 local volunteers had contributed to the project.

It offers the community a chance to drop off needed items as donations, have volunteers pick them up or sponsor groceries or gift cards.

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HPHS senior Lauren Levey and freshman Jagger Barnes joined Harrigan as the core members of the Shop N' Drop team. The groceries are available to families for pick up or can be dropped off.

"Based off of our numbers, we have how much goes into each family bag, so each family gets the same thing, and then we'll add extras if they're a bigger family," Levey said. "They get two bags of groceries and one bag of toiletries, and those are very full bags. We like to make sure we have a lot of stuff for all of our families and that there's enough stuff to last them the whole week."

In addition to the essentials, the donated grocery bags include a themed item for kids, which could be school supplies, board games or a holiday-related gift.

Most of the participating families are native Spanish speakers, said Barnes, who is bilingual. She said the group contacts the families every week over the phone. The volunteers have also provided help finding a job and filling out the Census.

"We do whatever we can to support them, whatever it takes," Barnes said.

With a list of participating families that has grown mainly by word of mouth, there are no limitations or eligibility requirements to receive the donations. Nearly all are Highland Park or Highwood residents, according to the group's founders. Some families have opted out of the program as their financial situations improved.

When members of participating families have contracted COVID-19, they receive extra support.

"We've had plenty of families who are positive so we make sure we get them new tooth brushes, wipes, hand sanitizers, Kleenex, the disinfectant spray," Harrigan said. "We make sure that they don't come to the site and we make sure that they know how to take precautions to help their family not get it as well."

In addition to weekly grocery deliveries, teens also offer tutoring and coaching services to more than 20 local elementary school students in programs called Love2Learn and DreamB!G to address some of the negative educational and social effects of the pandemic on children.

Beyond the core group of HPHS students who have spent most of the past 16 Saturdays working on the food distribution project, Fiore said, the efforts have kept more than 100 high school kids busy throughout the summer with four hours a week of volunteer work.

Meanwhile, SALT Student Travel has cancelled at least four of its planned service-learning trips since the start of the pandemic.

"During this time when all of us are dealing with our emotions, ups and downs and kind of going day by day with our anxiety through COVID, I know that we have had many of our families of our kids giving back, doing the service, saying, 'Thank you. You have given them a purpose,'" Fiore said. "I know that it's made a huge difference in my life. I think this kind of saved me during the summer to be able to help others."