Chatham High Key Club Launches Food Drive

CHATHAM, NJ - The closure of school and cancellation of related events due to the coronavirus, or COVID-19, pandemic, the Key Club's 4th annual Outreach meal packing event was postponed until next year, but they aren't letting that slow them down.

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In lieu of the meal packing effort, the Key Club will look to battle food insecurity and have a capstone to the service year. To that end, Chatham High School will serve as a nonperishable food drive drop spot, running through June 5.

Bins will be placed outside of the main entrance to the high school and will be picked up and distributed by Norwescap Food Bank at the culmination of the drive. Norwescap has indicated that the items that are most needed include:

• cereal
• canned fruit
• pasta
• pasta sauce (plastic jar/cans only)
• soup

Key Club invites anyone in the community to contribute if they are able and social distancing will be practiced.

The Outreach meal event is also not gone and forgotten. The immediate Key Club past president, Will O’Neill is a graduating senior who put countless hours towards this culminating event, leading the club along with incoming president Owen Truppo, to raise over $13,000 toward the event, at which they expected to pack nearly 50,000 meals to feed local people in need.

"Will's commitment to Key Club has been remarkable and his service and leadership will be missed," Advisor Kiera Spadaro said. "We are all disappointed that the culminating event of our service year and Will's time as a member of Key Club is not going to happen as planned. We hope to use the postponement to our advantage to continue fundraising and potentially hold our largest event ever in the future. We will definitely aim to reschedule the event at a time when Will is home from college so that he can see all of his hard work come to fruition."

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