This year marked the Canned Food Drive’s 27th anniversary, with M-A students raising 420,336 pounds of food donations for the local community, surpassing the national record for the largest high school canned food drive.
The effort to feed thousands of local community members took months of care and work from students and teachers to donors, grocery store workers, and Ecumenical Hunger Program (EHP) staff. We aimed to capture the many stages and skill sets that went into such an impactful canning season.
The Prep
Preparations began long before students started canning, when they took to grocery stores to ask for food donations. In the months leading up to the drive, Leadership students coordinated with grocery stores and Ecumenical Hunger Program, the organization with which M-A collaborates to distribute the food and funds raised. Especially as the need for food increased with the instability of SNAP benefits, student leaders had to design systems with a greater capacity to raise and distribute food.
As the Canned Food Drive drew near, virtually all Leadership students broke into committees in charge of marketing, writing letters to ask families for donations, business donor partnerships, the sorting bins, sports team participation, and the new winter clothing drive.
Each Leadership student was also an ambassador to a fourth period class, providing updates on the drive’s progress toward the 300,000-pound goal and encouraging students to sign up to go canning in B-21.
The Canning
After signing up for a specific shift at a grocery store and grabbing plenty of informational slips about the food drive, hundreds of M-A students experienced the joy, and sometimes rejection, of canning. Standing in front of local grocery stores every day for a month, students asked customers to donate food and money, often sharing laughs with their friends as they attempted to make short elevator pitches for the drive.
Many community members donated generously, filling students’ car trunks with bags upon bags of canned soups, pasta, cereal, flour, toilet paper, and other everyday necessities. These material donations were crucial to the success of the drive in providing non-perishable foods to the community. At the same time, monetary donations went toward buying fresh produce for Distribution Day.
Seniors Katherine Vera Yarleque (left), Lily Steinmetz (middle), and Hailey Preuss (right) canning at Safeway. 
Senior Zoe Jannink receives donations at Trader Joe’s. 
Junior Elena Martinez-Fernandez poses with a trunk-full of food. 
Juniors Alexa Habibi and Riley Shipley receive donations at Trader Joe’s. 
Students smile with bags of food at Draeger’s. 
Sophomores Siomara Orozco-Martinez and Emily Chhen go canning at Soleska Market.
The Counting
Following some epic grocery store accomplishments, students counted the cans and cash they raised to track the progress of the drive. Leadership further motivated students to participate in canning by spurring healthy and often heated competition between sports teams, clubs, and fourth period classes. Here’s how the competition panned out.
The Bins
The morning frenzy at the bins cannot be forgotten. These four shipping containers in the parking lot held all the food collected at grocery stores, though it’s worth noting that 10 pallets of food had to be donated to EHP well before Distribution Day because of the overwhelming success of students out canning.
Every morning, students drove up to the bins and unloaded their bags of food, which were later sorted and reassembled into balanced meals in boxes by Leadership students, including students from the new Community Service Leadership class.
The boxes were then loaded and securely wrapped onto pallets for transport to EHP, a process that produced sore arms for students carrying boxes weighing 20 pounds or more.
Junior Maro Eaton works at the bins. 
Sophomore Jaime Parada Hernandez unloads bags. 
Freshman Aashna Shenoy drops off bags at the bins. 
Junior Isabelle Habibi adds toilet paper to the stack in the bins. 
Junior Lucy Westwood delivers bags. 
Junior Vivienne Legrand assembles boxes. 
Students assemble the U-Haul boxes set to hold food.
The Distribution
Distribution Day is always a day of pride, but students were especially accomplished this year, as they served over 2,000 local community members, most of whom waited in line on the sidewalk since 6:00 a.m.
Smiles, hugs, and a collaborative spirit emanated from Leadership students, athletes, club members, alumni, teachers and their families, EHP volunteers and staff, and the community members receiving food. The distribution operation ran smoothly, with students often wheeling carts of food many blocks away to community members’ cars. Notably, the winter clothing distribution was unique and very popular, with people taking warm coats almost as fast as they were being brought out from storage.
Supplies of food ran out before 11:00 a.m. In total, the M-A community served 332 families, including 791 children and 236 elderly people.
Sophomore Briana Bedolla Alvarado and freshman Lela Eaton match carts of food with community members in line. 
Student Aspirations Program Coordinator Jenna Carson and Librarian Catherine Burton Tillson smile. 
Volunteers sort potatoes. 
Students push food to a community member’s car in a giant cart. 
A young community member watches students deliver food to her car. 
Seniors Do and Olivia Tantisira push a cart down the street. 
Do delivers food to a community member. 
A student carries bags of food. 
Senior Kylie Cox delivers food to a community member’s car. 
Sophomores Amelie Ho and Aiko Robinson smile. 
Students listen to the closing remarks at Distribution Day. 
Leadership President Auden Jones, Vice President Caroline Rose, and Amoroso thank volunteers.
“This is ingrained in the student body at our school. There is no other school like M-A, and I am so proud to be a Bear.”
Leadership teacher Mike Amoroso
M-A Chronicle journalists Audrey Majzun, Caleigh Jones, Siboney Lynch, and Lawrence Chao were contributing photographers for this article.
