Every year, Mrs. Dowell and her class organize an event or fundraiser to help the local community. This year, they decided to partner with Harvesters, a food bank that serves 27 counties in NE Kansas and NW Missouri. According to the Harvesters website, “A food bank is a place that collects, packages, stores, and distributes food to a network of more than 900 partner agencies.” This year, the goal was to make and distribute at least 400 boxes to give to people in need of food.
Mrs. Dowell and her students decided to partner with Harvesters for this year’s fundraiser due to the rising costs of food. “The WERC Community Service group decided to focus on food insecurity as a community issue they wanted to help address. With the rising cost of food, we knew many families would struggle to have a holiday meal this year and we wanted to be a small part of helping provide them that meal. After researching nonprofit organizations in our area, we found that Harvesters was a trustworthy and admirable organization to work with, so we decided to partner with them.”
The fundraiser consisted of WRMS advisory classes competing against each other to fill the most food boxes, with a winning advisory on each 7th and 8th grade team. After the fundraiser ended, the winning advisory teams were rewarded with donuts.
Kelbi Mitchell, a 7th grader on the Voyager team, was a top contributor to the fundraiser. She filled seven boxes. Mitchell said she cares about families in need. “It is important to me to make sure that people that don’t have meals on these holidays have them,” she said.
8th grader Prajeet Akula who helped with the fundraiser said the fundraiser wasn’t easy, but he enjoyed the process. “It took a lot of effort and lots of teamwork to get everything to work. I enjoyed the part where we all got to work together and talk and sort out and count which advisory had the most.”
Congratulations to the advisory winners and to Mrs. Dowell and her class for a successful fundraiser.
8th-grade Winners: Mrs. Bruce, Ms. Colwell, Mrs. Appelhanz, and Mrs. Barnes.
7th-grade Winners: Mrs. McDonald, Mrs. Thornburgh, Mrs. Wolferts, and Mr. Heinritz.
