Chelmsford High Thanksgiving Food Drive Collects 1,553 Pounds Of Food

CHELMSFORD, MA — Chelmsford High School's recent Thanksgiving food drive collected 1,553 pounds of non-perishable food for the Merrimack Valley Food Bank (MVFB), the school announced.

The drive was run jointly by the school's Class of 2023 officers and sophomore Blake Downs, who led the effort on behalf of Boy Scouts of America Troop 81.

The food was collected three times per week during the Plus Block class period, and classes competed to see which one donated the most items.

Debbie Callery, executive director of the Lowell-based MVFB, said the nearly 4,000 items of food donated to her organization was enough to feed more than 1,200 people at Thanksgiving.

The MVFB provides nutritious food for up to 80,000 people a month through its direct service programs and supplies 120 feeding programs in 32 cities and towns in Massachusetts.

"The need is so great at the pantries," Callery said. "Chelmsford is seeing an uptick in those visiting the pantries, and they're not all from Chelmsford. They're seeing people from Nashua and Lowell and they're serving them all."

The food drive actually resulted from a partnership between two separate food drives.

CHS senior Jash Bhut, who is the senior class treasurer, said he had long been looking to replicate the highly-successful Project 300 Thanksgiving Food Drive that he had been a part of at McCarthy Middle School. However, the pandemic had prevented him from bringing that project to CHS until this year.

As he and the other student officers began putting together the drive/competition, Bhut came across Downs, who was organizing the annual Troop 81 food drive.

The organizers of both drives soon joined forces.

"We saw the Troop 81 fundraiser was going and we didn't want to step on their toes. (We decided) we'll add Project 300, the competition-based aspect here, and we'll get twice as many cans," Bhut said.

Each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the drive's organizers took turns wheeling a pushcart to the Plus Block classes in order to collect the food.

In the end, Math teacher Matthew Witte's class donated the most food, 1,552 items, earning a catered breakfast.

Bhut said the amount of food donated during the drive had exceeded his expectations.

"I feel like getting 4,000 cans was a really big success for us," Bhut said. "We expected maybe 1,500. We saw a lot of people showing a lot of love. I'm really happy with it and it's only going to go up from here."