Kindergarten classes help donate Thanksgiving meals to students at another school

With COVID-19 leaving many families financially disrupted and facing food insecurity, Thanksgiving will look different this year. This will also affect many children who might not have Thanksgiving dinner.

Kindergarteners at one elementary school wanted to make it their job to help other kids.

“I’m super excited to go on the news, tough questions and get food to the people,” said one of the students.

Getting food to others is the goal for these three classes of kindergarteners at Babcock Neighborhood School.

“I’m really excited, so excited, super excited,” said another kid.

Cecilia St. Arnold is the Executive Director of Blessings in a Backpack of SWFL. “These three classes of 5-year-olds are providing meals for 50 families and I think that’s just phenomenal,” St. Arnold said. “Because people don’t give, ‘her littles,’ kids the opportunity to understand our community and our needs.”

St. Arnold teamed up with the kids, “littles” as she calls them, to make their goals become a reality.  “To have these kindergartners take this on as her project within two weeks, two weeks Nicole, and they put this together,” said St. Arnold.

Those two weeks were spent creating menus, spreading the word and accepting donations.

Teacher, Leslie Lane, says it’s inspiring to see these students make a difference in the lives of others. “The love and compassion that has been shown out of these little five and six-year-olds hearts has just blown our whole entire school away,” Lane said.

That hard work they put in is about to pay off. “yeah!! Are you proud of the whole kindergarten team? yeah!” said one of the kids.

They’ll be donating the meals they collected to Tice Elementary School on Wednesday. “I called Tice and they were crying,” St. Arnold said. “They were just so thrilled to know we are going to bring them over 50 meals tomorrow. For them to distribute on Thursday and Friday before school is out. ”

Now, the kids at Tice Elementary School will be able to go home next week with a Thanksgiving meal.

Wednesday at 10 a.m., FGCU students will help deliver the food donations to Tice Elementary School.

Babcock Neighborhood Schools plans to continue this project next year and hopes to inspire other schools to do the same.