The holiday season is upon us and the Manchester Township School District's (MTSD) Helping Hands for Hunger food drive, driven by the Manchester Township High School (MTHS) students and staff, is in full swing. Helping Hands for Hunger has been a community-wide initiative for 16 years. It is a time when everyone comes together to provide Thanksgiving meals confidentially to Manchester school district families who need extra support during the holiday season.
During the months and weeks leading up to the Helping Hands for Hunger meal basket distribution, it is a busy time behind the scenes coordinating, collecting, and ensuring enough food is obtained in time for 100 Thanksgiving meal baskets to be distributed. Students and staff at every Manchester school are busy collecting non-perishable food items for the meal baskets. The community is graciously sending in gift card donations. Local restaurant Burger 25 generously hosted a dining-out fundraiser last evening to help Helping Hands for Hunger raise the funds needed for the perishable food items included in the meal baskets. MTHS high school students baked and packaged over 625 brownies in their Food & Consumer Science Classes to ensure each Helping Hands for Hunger meal basket includes fresh dessert. Today, MTHS students visited New Beginnings Church in Brick, NJ to pick up arguably the most important food component of the Helping Hands for Hunger Thanksgiving meal baskets, the turkeys!
Obtaining hundreds of frozen turkeys has historically been the most challenging part of the Helping Hands for Hunger initiative. When New Beginnings Church learned about Helping Hands for Hunger, they generously offered to donate 100 frozen turkeys to help. Today MTHS student volunteers traveled with Vice Principal Joseph Serratelli and Guidance Counselor Dana Simonelli to New Beginnings to load up the donated frozen turkeys and bring them back to MTHS in preparation for putting the meal baskets together.
The students were provided a tour of the New Beginnings Food Pantry which services a large portion of the community in the same way that the MTSD Helping Hands for Hunger initiative will. Students learned about the food pantry operation, toured the facility, and met community members from Shore Foods and ReMax Revolution who were providing hundreds of frozen turkeys for donation to the Food Pantry in the same way that New Beginnings is donating frozen turkeys to Helping Hands for Hunger.
After the tour and a brief lunch, students got right back to work, heading back to MTHS to unload the 100 donated turkeys where they will remain frozen and safely await confidential distribution in the coming days. Thank you to New Beginnings Church for your donation to our school district's Helping Hands for Hunger initiative. Thank you to all of the community who continue to come together to help support Helping Hands for Hunger. Next stop: the assembling of the Helping Hands for Hunger meal baskets! Next week students from every school across the district will join at MTHS to put the meal baskets together ahead of confidential distribution.
