Y Leaders Club from Rochambeau Middle School Makes a Difference in Southbury

Yesterday, 16 students from the RMS Leaders Club traveled to the Southbury Food Bank to volunteer.  This trip was their Crawl Project, their first effort coming together as a group to volunteer and help their community.  As the group grows, we’ll complete Walk and Run projects, which require more planning and preparation.  The Leaders Club brought with them 172 pounds of donated goods, everything from chicken noodle soup to baby food to shampoo.  The group arrived with smiles on their faces and learned a great deal about the need in their own community.  After sorting, inspecting, and shelving the goods that were donated from the Leaders Club drive at RMS, they helped bag paper goods.  This process quickly turned into a speed-obsessed assembly line… with finished bags of rolls of paper towels, toilet paper, and tissues being thrown across the Southbury Food Bank into a mountain of goodwill! 

The Leaders left the Food Bank with the knowledge that there is a great deal of need in their own community and that any amount of help can make a big difference.  Ann Marie Galus from the Southbury Food Bank also explained how important their new location is, as it is easy to access and much more private than their last location.  She was pleased with the Leaders Club’s timing as well, since donations often decrease during the spring and summer months, but the need does not.  (They’ll be looking for donations of peanut butter, jelly, and cereal very soon!)  

Check out pictures from this event and the Memorial Middle School Leaders Club trip to the Middlebury Community Food Bank on Camp Oakasha’s Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.340987632631742.81653.311733035557202&type=1   

Leaders Club is a nation-wide program run by the Y that offers youth the opportunity to practice social responsibility through community volunteerism and leadership development.  The Leaders Clubs in Southbury and Middlebury began this winter thanks to the Southbury Community Trust and will continue next year, because of the involvement of the students, parents, and staff at both schools.