Weiser Middle School helps tackle hunger

In honor of Super Bowl week, students and staff at Weiser Middle School recently participated in a nationwide fundraiser known as the Souper Bowl of Caring.  

 For the 15th year Weiser Middle School, led by Deena Hall and her homeroom, has participated in this national effort to fight hunger in the local community donating  a total  of 2940 canned/boxed food items for Love INC and over $685 for the ROSE Advocates. 

 The Souper Bowl of Caring is a  national service project done each year during the Super Bowl weekend. The organization encourages  youth from around the country  to raise funds and gather donations for local charities to fight hunger. 

 With the idea that while much of the country celebrates with large amounts of food for Super Bowl Sunday, others in their community go hungry.  Since the project began in the early 1990s, over $145 million in food and money donations has been collected to fight hunger in the United States.  

 Weiser Middle School joined the efforts of the national project 15 years ago with the goal of all students and staff members at WMS donating $1 or a canned food item. This year that meant the school goal was 450 donations.

 With this goal in mind, students collected donations in their homeroom classes the week prior to the NFL Super Bowl.  Besides collecting donations, students also participated in a daily hunger trivia challenge based on hunger facts that were posted around the school by Marie Thomas’ eighth grade homeroom. 

 New to this year, students also learned some of the trivia from an online game called “Hunger Clicker” created by  eighth grade Weiser Middle School student Jayden Anderson. 

 As the final donations were counted, Chad Gibson’s eighth grade homeroom ended the week with the most donations, earning the title Souper Bowl Champions this year by single handedly exceeding the school goal with a record breaking 500 food items and over $107. 

 Hall pointed out that several of the homerooms showed outstanding generosity with 15 of 17 homerooms each bringing in over 100 donations.  As a result of the school-wide effort, WMS was able to celebrate their second largest donation year ever. 

 Over the past 15 years of participation Weiser Middle School has donated over 29,000 food items and $7,162 to local charities. 

 Hall would also like to give special recognition to the Indianhead 4-H club led by Nicol Mink. They once again volunteered their time on Saturday, Feb. 2, to sort, organize, box, and transport all of the food donations from Weiser Middle School to Love INC.