Tiverton High School Students Send 800+ Cans To Tiverton Food Pantry

Tiverton High School students passed on the Thanksgiving spirit on Tuesday, donating more than 800 canned goods, nonperishable food items and toiletries to the Tiverton food pantry.

Students collected the all the goods in about a week, rallying around a cause that could make a difference to struggling families in their own community.

"This summer we discussed the idea of the food drive and we wanted to be able to donate in our own community," said Carrie Gibbons, an English Language Arts teacher at the high school who helped organize the food drive.

The Advisory Committee, a group of about a dozen high school teachers, plans events like the food drive to teach students compassion and understanding for their neighbors. It also offers opportunities for students to catch up on community service hours, which are required for graduation.

"It shows that they actually care about what's going on in the community and that if there are people in need, they will actually help them," said Keleigh Cordeira, a senior, who helped advertise the drive and afterward, sort and count the lot.

Cordeira said she was impressed by the volume of supplies students dropped off within such a short time period. She donated 12 items.

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, lots of gravy, stuffing and vegetables were in the mix, Cordeira said there was a balance of other nonperishable foods such as pasta as well as toiletries.

Tiverton High School's drop off at the East Bay Community Action Program's (EBCAP) Tiverton food pantry  on Tuesday, coincided with the release of the 2012 Status Report on Hunger by the Rhode Island Community Food Bank. It states that Rhode Island now ranks highest in New England for food insecurity.

Food donations to food banks around the state have declined. Donations at the Rhode Island food bank are down by almost two million pounds in the last four years - even as the demand for emergency food assistance has increased.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, food insecurity in Rhode Island now affects 15.5 percent of the population, affecting 67,000 households. Of that amount, 6 percent report the most severe conditions associated with hunger.

“In the aftermath of the Great Recession, thousands of Rhode Islanders cannot afford adequate food and would go hungry if it were not for federal nutrition programs and the Food Bank’s statewide network of emergency food programs,” said Andrew Schiff, Chief Executive Officer of the Rhode Island Community Food Bank. “As the long-term jobless exhaust their unemployment benefits, they increasingly rely on government and charitable programs to feed their families.”