This past Valentine’s season, Holyoke High students and staff were given the opportunity to show that “HHS cares.” They were given the chance to donate to a food drive put on by the Room 116 advisory class. The food drive ran from February 1 through the 12 and all donations were given to Margaret’s Pantry in Holyoke.

This year, all HHS advisories were given a lesson that focused on ways young people can help their community. This lesson is what sparked the idea of having a food drive into the minds of the advisory 116 class. Mrs. McKenna, the teacher of advisory 116, told The Herald, “ I said, ‘Is there a project that you would be interested in as a group?’ and they came up with a whole bunch of ideas, and we thought that a food drive would be the easiest one for the first one we’re going to do. We might do another project this year.”

It was around Christmas when the advisory class came up with the idea to have a food drive, but they decided to wait until it was around Valentine’s Day to hold the drive because there was already a lot happening around the school. They used catchy slogans associated with Valentine’s Day to advertise their drive such as, “Share the love with somebody who needs it.”

The food donated to the drive was given to Margaret’s Pantry in Holyoke during February vacation. “I later found out that school vacation week is a week that there tends to be more people going to the food bank to get donations because kids don’t go to school, and some kids don’t get a meal because of that,” said McKenna. The advisory class chose to donate to Margaret’s Pantry because they noticed that it is the place where Kate’s Kitchen, a local shelter, gets their food.

The advisory class ended up having four boxes filled with food to donate to Margaret’s Pantry. “I think it was successful. It would have been good to have a little more but it was a good start. We were happy,” said McKenna.

The food drive provided a great way for the HHS community to come together and donate to a worthy cause. “I think as a school if we do more things to help our community, not only are we helping the community. Students are learning the values of helping other people, working together to get a job done and deciding what kinds of things are important that they want to do with helping other people or working together,” said McKenna.

Sadie Pecia ’19, a student in advisory 116 and HHS, thinks “it was a great idea to have this food drive for the less fortunate who really need all the love they can get! I feel really happy and proud of my fellow classmates who donated to these people who really needed our help during this winter season.”

All the students in advisory 116 participated in helping with a piece of the food drive whether it was making posters, taking down posters, or carrying the boxes to McKenna’s car. All the students helped in one way or another. McKenna told The Herald, “I describe my class as the bomb-dot-com! They’re just fantastic. They participate in everything that we do. It’s a very good group of students and we have a lot of fun during our advisory.”