THS HAPPENINGS : BY MARIA HEDGES, ZOE VAN AUKEN & NINA BALDWIN
Every year Trenton High School has a canned food drive for families in need over the holidays, and students and teachers alike contribute to help us reach our incentive goal of 5,000 cans. The incentive is an hour off of school the Friday before Christmas break, which is an attention grabber for students and teachers. Trenton has been able to reach this goal almost every year, which is very impressive, to say the least.
A smaller contest is held between all of the first hour classes in the school, with a Panera bagel breakfast for the class that collects the most canned goods. Some teachers offer extra credit for cans brought in, which tends to influence more students to help out.
This year’s winner was Mrs. Lowe’s AP Environmental class, which brought in almost one-fifth of the school’s total cans. Economic times can be tough and money can be short during the holiday season, but regardless students in Trenton are still able to collect a mass amount of cans to donate to other people who need them. These cans are sent to the Trenton Bus Garage and St. Tim’s church to be sorted and boxed by students and volunteers of the city.
Students from both the high school and the middle school traveled to the Trenton Bus Garage to help other volunteers sort and box cans and fresh produce for families in Trenton. There were thousands of cans to sort through and separate, but the efforts from student volunteers got the job done in a matter of hours.
The fresh produce was also separated into boxes by students and sent to households that needed them, along with a respective amount of canned goods to feed all of the family members. This fundraiser feeds any of the families that contact the city and are in need of food for their family or for themselves. The amount of food donated is able to supply most of the needy families in Trenton, even if it’s only for a short while.
The amount of people who helped out with this fundraiser and donated cans displays how unified Trenton is as a community, and how people can come together when times are tough to give to the less fortunate and help others around them.
Although there was an incentive to donate, that little push motivated numerous students to give to people in need and unify individual efforts to accomplish something as a whole school, and as a community. Helping someone in need and making a difference in someone’s life is incentive enough, and students at Trenton High School never fail to reach beyond themselves to improve the lives of those around them.
Student correspondents Nina Baldwin, Zoe Van Auken and Maria Hedges are seniors at Trenton High School.