Nearly 500 pounds of citrus collected for the hungry
Just in time before last month’s freezing spell, kindergarten students at St. Mark’s Episcopal Day School collected citrus fruit for the Second Harvest Food Bank, while learning the importance of giving to hunger relief.
Last fall the kindergarten students studied how fruits and vegetables grow, while learning valuable lessons about need and hunger. As a service project, the children held a school-wide citrus drive to collect the extra fruit. For three days, students and parent volunteers collected donations of “spare” fruit from the school’s families during morning carpool drop-off. The kindergarteners sorted the fruit by type, then counted and weighed the amount collected as a math lesson.
Just before Christmas break, the students proudly filled up a truck bed with 494 pounds of oranges, lemons, grapefruits, kumquats and more to be delivered to Second Harvest Food Bank where it will be distributed to families in North Florida who are food insecure.