From November 4 to November 15, 2024, students had the opportunity to bring donations to their first block classroom, with all proceeds going to the Media Food Bank.
Haven Helps collected over 5,000 food items in their annual drive, setting a new record.
Haven Helps has been passionate about pursuing food scarcity. According to the activities website, the club is focused on volunteer service in the Wallingford-Swarthmore community.
“The best way we can give back to the community, in our minds, is by helping with something like food insecurity,” senior Haven Helps leader Samantha Czaplicki said.
The club was especially pleased with this year’s turnout, the overall donations having more than tripled from years past.
“Ms. [Kirste] Tanzosh’s class had 1,600 cans. That was a record,” Czaplicki said. “Last year, the highest number of cans we had was 500 something. This year, the top three, if not four, classrooms beat that number. We’re really happy with how the community showed up.”
The total collection in fall 2023 was 3,112 cans and $686.00, according to an email from Haven Helps adviser Mrs. Beth Benzing.
These results may be due to a competition the club put in place: the first block classroom with the most cans collected was to be rewarded with a breakfast.
“We like to have some healthy competition between classes because that makes it more fun and encourages people to bring in as many cans as they can,” Czaplicki said.
Pancakes and waffles proved a motivating incentive, and Tanzosh took the competition a step further.
“Because there’s 32 [students], I divided them up into four teams of eight so they were competing against each other to see who was going to win,” Tanzosh said. “Since whoever wins is supposed to get a breakfast, the group that was bringing in the most was supposed to get to go first when they got the breakfast.”
Consequently, Tanzosh and her Linear Algebra students won in a landslide. Much of their win was also due to the students’ sheer excitement and resourcefulness around bringing in donations.
“I saw ramen packets, and it was 30 cents a packet, so I called Madison Benzing, who runs Haven Helps, and asked, ‘Hey, can we do ramen?” senior Christina Si said. “When she said yes, I texted everybody. The entire Linear [Algebra] class found out, and we just started bringing in so much ramen.”
Senior Tianyue Wang was excited about the class’ win but even more amazed to see how people showed up.
“If we lost with 1,647, I’d just be proud of our school,” Wang said.
Haven Helps members loaded up and dropped all the proceeds off at the Media Food Bank, where they will be directly distributed to the community.
“They take our food, all 5,000 cans, or items that we collect, and they distribute them to the families in need that they attend to,” Czaplicki said.
Czaplicki and the whole of Haven Helps couldn’t be happier with how the drive went, and the possibility of future food drives is significant.
“Based on the success and how it’s just been continuing to grow over the years that I’ve been here, I think we’ll definitely do another one,” Czaplicki said.
