This fall at Burke, the Student Council put together a canned food drive to benefit local shelters. The drive ran from Nov 5-17, and Student Council members came around to advisements everyday to collect donations.

There was an extra incentive to encourage students to donate. Whichever advisement class donated the most canned food at the end of the two weeks earned a donut party. One winner wasselected from each grade.

Mrs. Johnson’s advisement won for 12 grade, Mr. Boyer’s for11, Mr. Berg’s for 10, and Ms. Woodman and Mr. Long’s weretied for 9 grade.

The committee wanted to get a lot of donations, which is why they [the committee] made it a competition between the advisements to motivate students. It definitely paid off, as they collected 998 food items. This is sophomore Kinverley Franco’s first year on student council, and she’s impressed with the amount of cans they were able to collect.

“The amount we collected was upwards of 900,” Franco said.“We didn’t really have a set goal in mind, but we wanted to collect as many as possible.”

The food drive will help many families with the holiday season, and donating to local shelters is the fastest and easiest option to achieve this. Families are facing many struggles in the midst of the ongoing pandemic and its lingering effects. All of the canned goods collected will go to a local organization.

“We’re donating it all to the Food Bank of the Heartland. A lot of families have struggled through Covid, and getting food hasbe hard. By donating it to the food bank, we can make sure that people in the community are fed and that they have access to it,” Franco said.

Putting the food drive together has been a big effort within Student Council. Members went around collecting canned goods during advisement, and many people were needed to run and organize the drive.

“Usually we come up with ideas as a committee and then our committee leader guides it. The head of our committee is Lucy Marvin,” Franco stated.

The community service committee is focused on things they can do to help people on a local scale. StuCo member and sophomore Lucy Marvin led the group with the food drive.

“This is my first year on student council. The whole community service committee helped come up with the idea,” Marvin said.

Food drives have been done in the past at Burke. Although not a new concept, they continue to help the community in great ways. Groups at Burke are dedicated to serving the community as best as they can, and StuCo is very happy with the resultsfrom the food drive this year.

“We had almost 1,000 cans,” Marvin shared.

Student council plans to continue to support the school and Omaha community moving forward. They thank all students for participating, and hope that they continue to support local shelters even though the food drive is over.

“Food drives are very significant for families who are less fortunate and need assistance with meals,” Marvin said.