Boone Students Catalyze Community Hunger Network April 20, 2016
Boone Students Catalyze Community Hunger Network April 20, 2016
This spring, Boone High School students held their own Hunger Summit with leaders from the World Food Prize, Whispering Roots, Crop Production Services, and the Outreach Program participating. Students bagged 20,000 meals as they rotated to different speakers on the subject of food insecurity locally and worldwide.
The Hunger Summit had its origins in the 2014 Boone Community Hunger Banquet.
In 2014, a Boone high school senior worked with Iowa-based Outreach Program, the school’ s talented and gifted coordinator, and eighth-grade students to organize a community hunger banquet raising awareness and funds for community development in Tanzania. About 75 people battled winter weather to attend the Boone Hunger Banquet, where they participated in an educational hunger simulation, learned about Outreach and its work in Tanzania, and raised $ 756 to send Tanzanian children to school and equip a kitchen at a newly built children’ s feeding center in Tanzania.
Students and adults from the community also discussed next steps, and there was substantial interest in sponsoring an Outreach Program meal-packaging event to provide meals for hungry people in the Boone area and overseas. This interest laid the foundation for the 2016 Hunger Summit and meal packaging event.
An important contributor to the success of the Boone Community Hunger Banquet was the emphasis on partnerships. Boone high school student-organizers worked closely with Outreach, and their decision to mentor eighth grade students supported the middle school’ s service-learning and citizenship curriculum.
These connections led to the launch of the Boone Hunger Coalition organization in Boone County, which is now working collectively to bring services to residents of the community who are food insecure.
In addition, connections have been made to corporate businesses and non-profits who are collaborating with the 7-12th grade Boone students in ways that are extending the Science curriculum in Aquaponics. The program will be a part of the Life Sciences curriculum starting in the Fall of 2016.
For more information about Boone High School or the Boone Hunger Coalition, please contact Ms. Peggy Watkins at pwatkins @ boone. k12. ia. us or 515-230-4233.
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