NHS food drive gives treats, no tricks
Starting in the back row (left to right) NHS members Andi Nelson, Derek Wacker, Braxton Wentworth, Janson Pilkington, Connor Engel, Joey Benjamin, Jude Elgert, Drake Trent, Trevin Arlt, Bryce Kolc, (front row) Reagan Wilson, Maycee Hays, Shaylynn Campbell, Laycee Josoff, Alyssa Husing, Abby Keiser, Zoie Nielsen, Bella Tederman, Haley Kube, Ellie Lloyd, Maura Tichota and Mallory Zeleny pose with the donations they collected. NHS members then loaded the donations up for LifeHouse Family Services to use in their emergency shelter.
Many students might think that service projects like collecting food and paper goods would be boring or tiring. That’s not the case for the Yutan National Honor Society (NHS) members, who just completed their fourteenth annual trick-or-treat for the homeless.
NHS advisor Ginger Eikmeier explained the yearly process of what the NHS members do to prepare for this food drive.
“All the years that I’ve been an advisor, one of our yearly activities is a trick or treat for the hungry or homeless. And what we do is we break up into groups and we traverse the town of Yutan, going door to door asking for donations for a local either food pantry or homeless shelter depending on the year,” Eikmeier said.
For the past few years, they have been donating to LifeHouse Family Services, which is an emergency shelter that reached out to Eikmeier asking if they would donate.
“It’s an emergency shelter. And they a few years ago sent us kind of a flier asking if we would do a paper goods drive for them, and so since they sent us that, that’s what we normally donate to,” said Eikmeier.
One NHS student who helped with the trick-or-treat is senior Abby Keiser, whose group found a creative way to go door to door.
“It was lots of fun. Laycee, Shay, Maycee and myself went around town on Laycee’s four-wheeler and asked people if they would donate for our food drive,” Keiser said.
Keiser thinks that doing these projects helps students become better leaders.
“I think that it shows that we’re all just trying to be leaders and we’re all becoming bigger and better people,” said Keiser.
Another student who participated in the food drive was senior Zoie Nielsen. Nielsen personally enjoyed getting food and knowing that they would donate the items for a good cause.
“It made me feel good about myself, and I enjoyed doing it. I’m a person that, I’m scared to talk to people that I don’t know, but when I was [the] one talking, it made me feel good about myself,” said Nielsen.
One of the reasons Nielsen wanted to join NHS in the first place is that she likes helping people, and she said that this was another great way to be part of another school activity.
“I knew that I’d be helping people and I’d be doing service hours, and I wanted to be more involved with school activities,” said Nielsen.
Nielsen hopes that NHS groups at other schools will do similar activities.
“I think it makes us look good. I don’t know if other schools do this. But I think they all should because just with the three of us we collected a lot of food, so it was crazy how much food we got,” Nielsen said.
Altogether, the NHS members collected one of their highest amounts of canned food and paper products.
“We collected just short of 1,200 items, which I think is really amazing, considering that prices of things are much higher now,” said Eikmeier. “So the fact that the community was still so generous with the items we asked for I think is really amazing.”
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Jade Lewis is a junior and is in her second year of journalism. She enjoys writing stories and taking photos. Outside journalism, Jade is involved in...
