School Name and Location:
Rio High School, Rio, WI
Team Name:
RIO FFA
Summary of Project:
6 FFA members enrolled in the Agricultural Leadership course decided to take on the Lead 2 Feed Program Challenge this past spring. We began the process by using the Lead 2 Feed lesson plans in December. Over the course of the following months we went through the lessons along with other supplemental material. Students first created two power points to help to increase awareness of the issues of hunger. The K-12 enrollment is about 230 students. The rural town of Rio has a population of 1100 people. The students set their Big Goal to “Feed the Hungry in Our Community and Beyond.”
The students divided into two groups to develop their 2 action plans. They had set 3 goals. The 1st goal was to have a “Pie Auction” that we would do during a home basketball game with a goal to collect $200. The other group focused on goals 2 and 3. The 2nd action plan was titled “Kiss the Pig.” This consisted of a week long food drives at the elementary and at the middle/high school levels. The 2nd goal at the High School was to collect 200 items along with an additional 100 items donated towards the names of the police officers. The 3rd goal was for the elementary students to collect more can food then the middle and high school student total of 223 items. The end result of both drives would be that teachers and local police volunteers would kiss a real pig!
Both groups made proposals to get approved by the building principal. They developed their action plans with daily tasks that they had to accomplish, which included, press releases, website update, flyers, collection boxes, tally sheets, people they had to contact. Once they had their action plans in place, they would divide up the work. This proved an effective tool to evaluate their steps in their action plan and to also have a blueprint to follow for next year. Each day they would also make daily comments on what they should have done differently or what went really well that day with the task that they had. Students worked well together and assisted the other group as needed.
The Pie Auction was the first major activity that happened the week before the 1st food drive. 22 members from the community participated by placing bids. Students put up flyers and had announcements during the previous week’s games and in the local paper and on Facebook. 50 informational flyers were sent home with FFA members to ask for help with pie donations. They also created bidder sheets for the sale. Thank you cards were sent to the buyers and to the people that donated the pies. On the night of the auction, $410 raised from the 13 pies that were donated by 8 parents. 22 community members placed bids on the 13 pies. The pie with the highest bid was the Rhubarb which raised $50!
The first “Kiss the Pig” food drive was done at the Middle/High School level during National FFA Week. Students had to contact the 18 homeroom teachers and gave each one a collection box and tally sheet to keep track of the donations. When students donated they could designate their food items towards voting for the teacher that they wanted to kiss the pig. Of those teachers 10 agreed to be in the mix to kiss the pig if enough items had been donated and they were in the top 5. In addition if 100 items were collected separately then the 2 local police officers came in to kiss the pig. We had a total of 223 items donated which is 188 pounds of food. The drive ended with a school assembly to celebrate the food drive results to watch the 5 teachers and the police officer kiss a baby pig.
Two weeks after the high school drive, a food drive was conducted at the elementary school. In the elementary school the leadership class took a slightly different approach to get the students excited. They did the same setup as before with flyers, tally sheets, collection boxes and announcements at the school and in the paper. Before the week of the elementary food drive the FFA members gave a presentation at an Elementary POPS (Power of Positive Students) assembly. FFA members presented to 230 students and teacher along with about 40 parents and community members that came to the assembly. This was a great tool to get the students excited. FFA members gave each elementary student a reminder card. On the back of 1 out of every 6 cards a dot was placed on them to illustrate that 1 out of every 6 people have some form of food insecurity or hunger.
The following week the food drive was conducted. At the end beginning of the next week the can food was collected from the 14 teachers and students and delivered to the food pantry. The elementary students met their goal of beating the middle/high school total and collected 374 items from 72 students. The next day the 4 teachers along with the local police officer celebrated by kissing a baby pig.
The FFA members collected all of the food and delivered them to the Rio Area Food Pantry. The pantry feeds 60 families per month. The time of our food drive and donation was during a slow time of the year for the pantry. Their non-profit number is ES6155.
Results:
In total, 697 food items and $410 was donated to the food pantry. Approximately 115 students donated can food items from grades K-12 with almost half of the elementary students donating items! 64 community members participated in the pie auction and assemblies. 32 teachers assisted with the daily food collections in their homeroom. 15 teachers, principal and 2 police officers volunteered to be in the kiss the pig contest.