Since End Hunger In Calvert County began a little more than a year ago, schools in Calvert County have been major partners by participating in food drives.
Northern High School’s Key Club and boys soccer team recently joined in, coming together to donate $1,300 to End Hunger earlier this month.
Last September, the soccer team hosted its 14th Annual North Beach 5K Run and One-Mile Fun Walk, which draws more than 150 people each year, and decided to donate a portion of the proceeds to End Hunger, according to a release.
The Key Club donated everything raised during its 1st Annual Co-ed Student-Faculty Volleyball Tournament and had several members volunteer during the 2nd Annual End Hunger In Calvert County Bike Ride.
“The Northern High School Key Club is proud to serve others,” said JoAnne Weiland, the club’s faculty advisor, in the release.
The donation will go towards assisting local families and helping them reach self-sufficiency, EHCC Program Director Robin Brungard said. EHCC clients are working people who are unable to meet their basic needs without the help of food pantries or government assistance, she added.
“The students in Northern’s Key Club and soccer team get it,” EHCC Chairman Rev. Robert P. Hahn said in the release. “They understand that many of the kids they sit in class with, walk down the hall with, and eat lunch in the cafeteria with, are the same people they have now reached out and helped. What they have done is the epitome of what End Hunger In Calvert County stands for neighbor helping neighbor.”
Brungard said that one of the biggest challenges EHCC had from its beginning was getting people to realize that poverty was a problem in Calvert, one of the nation’s wealthiest counties. More than a year later, awareness and donations are up, she said.
“And we can always use more,” Brungard added. “We have not received so many donations that we don’t know what to do with them.”
By JEFF NEWMAN