HOWELL, NJ — The football field at Howell High School will be filled with students from across Monmouth County, with one goal: helping to feed those in need.
The students will be taking part in Dermer Dreams' 100 Yard Food Drive Challenge.
They will be bringing thousands of yellow food donation bags, with the aim of filling it from end zone to end zone with donations.
The event is from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday.
There's a second goal of the project: getting students engaged in the fight against hunger.
The students organize food collections in their neighborhoods, schools and communities, and bring the filled bags to the field.
The effort has collected more than 1 millon pounds of food, according to the organization.
The food drive got its start in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.
Alyse and Daniel Dermer and their family were displaced from their home in the wake of the storm and spent a few months living in different places, according to the Dermer Dreams website.
The desire to help others was something that had burned in the couple since they were children, long before they met, but in the wake of Sandy, "We realized that so many people were stuck in shelters with little or no food."
They started by placing donation bags on the doors of thousands of residents in Manhattan, with a letter explaining the problem and asking them to fill the bag with food and leave it in their lobby on a specific date.
"The program was an overwhelming success and thousands of pounds of food was collected and distributed to the shelters," the website said.
They moved to New Jersey and in 2019 launched the student-focused program, which allows the students to get community service hours while helping with the food drives.
The food that is donated to the drive is provided to local food banks, the organization said.
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