Chatham High Sophomore Spearheads Food Drive

As the school year comes to a close, two Morris County high school students are keeping an old rivalry alive and well—and for a good cause.

Tim Lonergan, a sophomore at , is collecting food donations for the Morristown Corps of the Salvation Army. He is accepting donations from the entire Chatham High community.

Competing with Lonergan to see who can get the most donations is Brendan Lewis, a freshman and Mendham High School. His donations will benefit the Salvation Army's Dover Corps.

Donations are tracked using YouGiveGoods.com, a website based in Mendham that facilitates charity drives. Lonergan's mother, Mary, is the director of strategic partnerships for YouGiveGoods.com.

The website recently launched a Food Drive Contest feature, which the boys are using to keep track of what community can donate the most food by June 21 at midnight.

Chathamites can click here to contribute and to track Lonergan's progress in real time on their computers or their smartphones.

Chatham Patch is helping Lonergan's effort. Patch will contribute one can of food for each new newsletter subscriber.

"Today’s kids are so tech savvy and are used to getting constant feedback," said Patrick O'Neill, the CEO of YouGiveGoods.com. "Part of our thinking in developing a contest system was to tap into how kids are actually doing things these days."

Lonergan is from a large family of volunteers in Chatham. He is one of five siblings, and his parents volunteer their time and energy at numerous organizations in Chatham. Lonergan's father, James, is the Chatham Borough council president.

"Helping others is something our family talks about a lot,” Lonergan said, and after recently seeing his mother raise more than $4,000 in food donations for Eva's Village in Paterson, he said, "I thought I could do something like that, too.”

Brenda Beavers, the New Jersey divisional director of Human Services for the Salvation Army, said, "I don’t think people realize how important it is to fill the food pantries in the summer when kids are not in school to get their one hot meal a day."

With many area families on vacation during the summer, Beavers said it is hard to run a food drive. "This contest between the schools is a great way to have some fun while helping us to feed hungry families this summer," she said.

“Our hope is that by making these drives more exciting and making it easy for people to connect and engage in the drive that it will produce better results—more food," O'Neill said.

You can check out Brendan’s drive in support of the Salvation Army—Dover Corps.

And you can check out Tim’s drive in support of the Salvation Army—Morristown Corps.

Or view the Scoreboard.