Awakening to a nagging reality

By Owen Boss

Staff Writer

WILLIAMSBURG - In the United States, 35.5 million people - including 12.6 million children - live in households where people go hungry.

That's one in 10 households - a statistic that bothers Nathaniel Jones and his classmates in Haydenville.

Jones and fellow fifth-grade students at the Hilltown Cooperative Charter School embarked on a semester-long campaign this year to help the less fortunate, culminating with a trip to Worcester Friday for a statewide conference.

"We've been learning about some really surprising numbers about hunger," said Jones, 10. "It makes us all want to get together to help the people who need it."

In the days leading up to the conference, which will be held at the College of the Holy Cross, Laurie Risler's classroom at the charter school has become a frenzy of activity. Without her saying a word to them, her students come in from recess focused on one goal - finding a way to gather food items for those in need.

As they break into groups, some students write letters to the editors of local newspapers, some work on the song they will sing for students from other schools and others complete posters for their formal presentation.

A board in the corner of the classroom is marked with a number of troubling statistics about local families in need of help and how far a donated food item will go toward helping them.

In Massachusetts, they've learned, more families than ever are depending on food banks to keep groceries on the table and about 8 percent of families face some form of "food insecurity," according to Project Bread, the state's leading anti-hunger organization.

Elsewhere in the classroom, posters show the difference between what a typical American family eats compared to the diets of those living in Third World countries, and students at computers search the Internet for local centers accepting donations.

Fueling the students' effort, Risler said, was a trip the class made in January during a collaborative celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day with students from Springfield's Martin Luther King Junior Charter School of Excellence.

"It has been great watching them learn about hunger," said Risler. "They have come to some pretty amazing revelations, like understanding that food centers don't just distributed to the homeless, that there are a lot of families out there just like their own that need some help getting by."

The school's community coordinator, Deirdre Arthen, said the exchange was an eye-opening experience that left students with a newfound appreciation for how many people struggle to make ends meet. After Hilltown students made the journey to Springfield, students from both schools distributed food gathered through a food drive to the Martin Luther King Community Center in Springfield.

"The kids were really inspired by actually being inside a food pantry in Springfield," Arthen said. "Actually talking to the people in the food pantry who needed the food was what really got this going. It made the hunger issue very immediate. It was no longer an anonymous goal like collecting food because someone needs it - there were people they could see and talk to who really needed the food."

Consider them mobilized

Since the trip, students have spent about an hour each day learning about hunger, both domestic and abroad. They used imaginary budgets to plan family shopping trips, began gathering food donations from family members and held an assembly to present what they learned to other students in the school.

During their campaign against hunger, students have also taken field trips to the Food Bank Farm in Hadley and Heifer International Farm in Rutland, Vt., both locations that educate visitors about solutions to local and global hunger.

"This effort really has been student-driven," Arthen said. "The state tells us a lot about what we have to do in terms of teaching, but it is great when you can take what the kids really want to learn about and give them the tools they need to do it."

At Friday's conference, which was organized by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, students from schools across the state will showcase what they have learned through their service projects and will each prepare a formal presentation of their particular topic of interest.

After they present what they have learned to students from other schools at the conference, Hilltown students are going to collect donations from other schools and bring them back to the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts.

"It will be a nice way to finish off the project," Arthen said.

Anyone interested in contributing to the students' effort can take either monetary or food donations to the school, in the Brassworks Building on Main Street in Haydenville. Arthen said all donations should be in by Friday, and while food donations are encouraged, each dollar donated translates to $9 worth of food.

Owen Boss can be reached at oboss@gazettenet.com.