Post Tagged with: "Community FoodBank of New Jersey"

Bowls of Hope Food Drive Sets Record, Collecting Nearly Two and a Half Tons of Food for Community FoodBank of NJ, Southern Branch

Our 2023 Bowls of Hope Food Drive collected nearly two and a half tons of food for the Community FoodBank of NJ, Southern Branch, setting a new school record with a total weight of 4,811 pounds.  High school students on the Student Council, who helped organize the school-wide event, packed up and loaded the donations into 26 large boxes and bins that were picked up by a FoodBank truck on Thursday, February 9.

The Food Drive was held during the month of January and concluded on February 4 at the Bowls of Hope Soup Cook-Off. The school record was previously set in 2021 with 4,655 pounds of food collected, and last year’s drive collected 4,063 pounds of non-perishable food.

Mrs. Brossman’s 2nd grade class won first place in the Bowls of Hope Food Drive contest, bringing in the most donations of non-perishable food.

Congratulations to Mrs. Brossman’s 2nd grade class for winning first place among all PreK-12th grade classes for collecting the most non-perishable food items — 1,118 items. The class will receive a pizza party as its prize.

“Thank you to all our school families who donated throughout January and to everyone who attended our Bowls of Hope Soup Cook-Off and brought in food to make this an overwhelming success,” said Event Coordinator Christian Delacruz, who oversaw the drive assisted by Student Council Advisor Dan Vasquez. “Your generosity will be a blessing to families in our community who are struggling to put food on the table.”

Classroom Spotlight: 2nd Grade Class Fills Backpacks to Bless Area Homeless

Students in Mrs. Brossman’s 2nd grade class collected and filled backpacks to bless homeless people in Atlantic City in December, supporting a larger project led by Calvary Chapel of Hammonton, who handed out the backpacks to the homeless on the streets of Atlantic City on December 17.

In all, the class donated 13 backpacks that were filled a variety of items, including blankets, gloves, hats, hygiene items, Bibles, and Dunkin or Wawa gift cards.

“This is the second year that my class has participated in this community service project and I think it’s a wonderful way for our students and their families to get involved in helping and serving those in need in our own community,” Brossman said. The collecting began on November 30 and ended on December 14.

Brossman put a display of the backpacks in the hallway outside her classroom to promote the project with the rest of the student body.

Throughout each school year, students from preschool to the 12th grade participate in a variety of community service projects to bless area veterans, seniors living in nursing homes, mail carriers, the homeless, the Atlantic City Rescue Mission, the Community FoodBank of New Jersey, and other charities, ministries, and non-profits.

ACS Donates Fresh Produce from School Garden to Community FoodBank in August

Students in our summer Cougar Camp harvested fresh produce from our school garden in August that was twice donated to the Community FoodBank of New Jersey, Southern Branch, in Egg Harbor Township. The donations totaled 28 pounds of organically grown vegetables, including green beans, banana peppers, green peppers, snap peas, tomatoes, and zucchini.

Our Cougar Camp students have been active in the school garden all summer – watering, weeding, harvesting, and planting seeds for fall vegetables. They have also been sampling the fresh vegetables, including carrots, lettuce, radishes, green beans, tomatoes, and beets.

Three ACS elementary students in Cougar Camp this summer participated in the after-school Garden Club last spring that planted the vegetable seeds in the garden and they were excited to see the bountiful harvest from their efforts.  The students, pictured above from left, are Nova Ciapppina, Callie Gibson, and Barrett Woods. The Garden Club was overseen by ACS faculty members Eric Tardif and Rebecca Jackson, who both also worked in Cougar Camp this summer.

Representatives from the Community FoodBank thanked ACS for its donations, which were delivered to their facilities in Egg Harbor Township on August 11 and August 19. Pictured below with Development and Communications Director Carole Karabashian (in center) are CJ Cicchino and Keishia Campbell, who received and weighed the produce on August 19.

Thank you to the AtlantiCare Healthy Schools, Healthy Children program for providing grants to support our garden, which was first established in 2015.  AtlantiCare also provided a grant for an ACS greenhouse, which is adjacent to the school garden.

 

 

School Garden, Greenhouse Ready for Summer, Fall Growing and Learning

The ACS school garden and greenhouse are ready for new opportunities for children to develop their green thumbs this summer and fall thanks to grant funding from the AtlantiCare Healthy Schools, Healthy Children program and revitalization efforts by our Garden Club advisors, school groundskeeper, and the ACS Boy Scout Troop Scoutmaster.

Activity for ACS students in the school garden and greenhouse usually goes into high gear in the spring, but due to the coronavirus outbreak, the school campus was closed from mid-March to the end of the school year. The roofing of the greenhouse was damaged by inclement weather and the raised garden beds were in need of weeding and new planting.

New, heavy-duty plastic sheeting for the greenhouse roof was purchased with the AtlantiCare grant funds and installed by Scoutmaster Mike Jorgenson. Jorgenson had led a team of scouts that built the greenhouse, which first opened in October 2018. Repairs and clean-up of the raised garden beds were carried out in June by Garden Club Advisors Bethany Kiefer and Eric Tardif and groundskeeper Brandon Stevens. Using grant funds, Kiefer and Tardif also purchased and planted a variety of vegetables and a few flowers in the garden, which they will maintain during the summer months.

Tardif, who is an ACS 4th grade teacher and the Cougar Camp Director, said campers will have the opportunity to water, weed, and learn about how to grow plants organically in pesticide-free soil as part of their camp experience. Some of the vegetables growing in the garden include tomatoes, squash, beans, eggplant, peppers, and watermelon. Tardif said produce harvested from the garden will be used in camp cooking classes and donated to the Community FoodBank of New Jersey, Southern Branch.

Kiefer, who is an ACS 5th grade teacher, said activity in the greenhouse will get underway in the fall, and maintaining and harvesting produce from the garden beds will also continue. Both teachers said they are looking forward to seeing students back in the garden again when the after-school Garden Club gets underway.