Food for hungry families

Highland School District hosts Stuff the Bus event

By Ally Turk
Posted 10/9/19

The Stuff the Bus event, put on by the Highland Central School District, took place on Saturday, Oct. 5, and raised food for the Highland Community Backpack Program.

The school district has been …

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Food for hungry families

Highland School District hosts Stuff the Bus event

Posted

The Stuff the Bus event, put on by the Highland Central School District, took place on Saturday, Oct. 5, and raised food for the Highland Community Backpack Program.

The school district has been fundraising non-perishable food for the program for years through social workers and counselors, but this was only the second annual Stuff the Bus event. Christine Sorbello, a local bus driver and a member of the Highland Support Association, was head of the project.

The Highland Community Backpack Program is a program for all three schools in the district, the elementary school, middle school, and high school, in which kids that meet a set of requirements are sent home on Fridays with food for the weekend. This backpack includes three dinners, two lunches, two breakfasts, some type of drink and some snacks.

Members of the Highland Support Association and some students volunteered their time to the event to help collect and sort through the food. Sorbello usually sorts the food that’s donated throughout the year and then brings it to the Highland Food Pantry, run by the Highland Methodist Church, to be stored until needed. Sorbello organizes and is in charge of the food donated through the year. When anything is needed she lets teachers and other union members know and supplies are donated pretty quickly, according to Sorbello.

“I do the collecting and stocking the shelves, there’s a separate team that stuffs and distributes the backpacks,” Sorbello said.

Sorbello was also in charge of advertising and social media for the event, which is not her forte according to her. She made and put flyers up at the post office, created posts on Facebook, and the event somehow ended up on the radio.

“I don’t know how that happened, I didn’t do that,” Sorbello said.

The district does food drives with their students during the school year and has two to three big fundraising events as well. During the homecoming game this year students were admitted free if they brought in a canned good for the food drive.

“We got a good collection from that,” Sorbello said. “We collected a lot to be able to send home.”
Last summer the program expanded into being a summer program for students who met the requirements and were interested. They provided some dinners, lunches, breakfasts and snacks throughout the week.

The event took place in Hannafords parking lot, with a wheelchair accessible bus to carry the donations. Sorbello prefers the wheelchair accessible bus for fundraising events due to the open space in the back where there are no seats.
“Hannafords has been really excellent to us,” Sorbello said. “They’ve helped so much.”

One of the benefits to being in a supermarket parking lot is that regular shoppers see the bus, or are given a flier in the parking lot, and decide to buy something extra in the store to donate.
The weather was a crisp 65 degrees and sunny the entire day, much better than last year when it poured, according to Sorbello.

Forty-five kids throughout the three schools are enrolled in the program. When backpacks are taken for the weekend, the students bring them back the next Monday to be stocked again for the next weekend.

“They’re supposed to bring them back, they don’t sometimes but that’s okay, we have plenty,” Sorbello said.