Photograph by Jessie Ciccarelli, Grade 12, STM

An Answer to God’s Call

By Victoria Verrecchia, Grade 9

“Halloween for Hunger.”  These were just words to me until I walked into our cafeteria at 10pm on Halloween night. All around me from left to right was food -  68,875 pounds of it - and over 750 volunteers buzzing around sorting and packing the food and stacking boxes. Halloween for Hunger, or H4H, is a campaign where students go door to door collecting non-perishable food items on Halloween night, instead of candy. All food collected goes to a local neighbourhood food bank, ours being the Neighbour to Neighbour Centre. This campaign began at STM in 2000 – adopted from the (italics) Free the Children (italics) organization - and has grown ever since. Due to the hard work of our staff and students, STM’s H4H campaign is Neighbour to Neighbour’s single largest annual contributor, and is the most successful H4H in the world, according to (italics) Free the Children (italics).

What does it take to do all of this? I think it starts with our school’s religious theme for the year, which is, “We are the clay and God is the potter.” God is moulding us into being better people that help others in need in a genuine way. Then came the planning. For the first two months of the school year, we had many meetings and went over, in great detail, every aspect of the campaign to make sure it would be a success. There were a total of 23 staff and students on the Executive Team, more than 70 on our Planning Committee, and over 750 volunteers who sorted, packed food, stacked boxes, canvassed for food and drove Halloween night. In addition, the local business community contributed; we had several sponsors who helped us cover our expenses. I am truly humbled to be a part of such a giving and caring community. Each had a part in making this project an incredible success. Our H4H campaign was a lot of work, but it taught each of us that when you work together, obstacles can be overcome. 

This was an amazing experience and I was grateful to have had the opportunity to be involved. We are ecstatic that we achieved our goal of 60,000 pounds of food and astonished that we surpassed it by so much! In the end, what made the event so great was that we had so many people eager to help and contribute their talents and abilities for such an important cause. I am very excited for next year and I know that if we continue with our efforts, as a team, we will be able to serve an even greater number of our community in need.