CARIBOU, Maine — After surpassing last year’s goal of packing 25,000 meals for hunger-insecure County residents, Caribou’s National Honor Society is aiming to pack at least 26,000 and hoping to go over 27,000 for this year’s event.
The NHS held the first event throughout 2016, led by adviser Kenneth Atcheson, who retired late last year due to an upcoming cancer surgery.
Now, NHS adviser Shannon Sleeper is overseeing the event and said that while she’ll have big shoes to fill, Atcheson left “beautiful instructions” for her, and has been in regular contact after successfully recovering from the surgery.
“It’s different now because [Atcheson] had such a vision for everything,” she said. “I’m in a typical substitute position, but I’ve been pretty much in constant contact with him, and he even visited me yesterday. He’s still very concerned about NHS and absolutely a valuable resource.”
Sleeper added Atcheson is “doing better” and currently enjoying some time with his granddaughter.
“He’s definitely handling this with grace,” she said.
Much like Atcheson when he led the event, Sleeper said most of the credit belongs to the dedicated, hardworking NHS students.
“We have 43 members this year, which is pretty big for any high school group,” Sleeper said. “Meagan Dube is doing an outstanding job as president, and I think it would be very different without these students.”
Dube said the NHS plans to donate the majority of the meals to County schools. Last year’s contribution to Catholic Charities Feed The County program ended with several leftover meals. In addition, the statistic of one in four students in Aroostook County being hunger insecure inspired this year’s students to focus on their peers.
“We’re still participating with Dixie Shaw, who leads the Feed the County program,” said CHS Senior Gabrielle Marquis, an NHS member and co-chair of the event, “but not as much as we are with other schools.”
Marquis added Atcheson will still participate in the event, which is set to occur on Feb. 2 at 9:00 a.m. in the Caribou High School ski building.
The co-chair, who participated in last year’s packing event along with Dube, said this year’s event has been much easier to organize since many of the donors who participated were eager to give back again.
Reaching out to schools, on the other hand, has proved to be challenging, as each school has a certain number of students that are regularly going without food and they need to contact each one to confirm how many meals to distribute.
“We haven’t heard back from all the schools about how many boxes they need,” Marquis said.
Dube said that the NHS has reached out to 43 schools in the area and are still waiting to hear back from 20.
“There are a lot of factors,” Dube said, “and it’s dependent on whether or not a particular town has a food pantry for their students.”
“A lot of the time, schools will tell us how many students they have, and how many out of that total will benefit from the meals,” Marquis added.
As of Jan. 17, Dube said the NHS still needs donations and wants to hit their fundraising goal of $6,500.
“We’re almost there,” Marquis said, “but we could still hear from donors. If we go over our goal, End Hunger New England will bring in more meals for us to package. We could still surpass 26,000 meals at this point.”
Dube and Marquis, both seniors, said the event is more challenging to organize this year, but are optimistic about the added responsibility.
“It’s rewarding,” said Dube. “You’re doing all this work, but you know it’s going to help so many people.”
According to a press release sent by United Way of Aroostook on Jan. 25, the event has raised $5,460 so far. The release indicated the United Way donated an undisclosed amount of money toward the project, and quoted Executive Director Sherry Locke, who applauded the National Honor Society’s philanthropic efforts.
“Helping to feed the County’s hungry children is such a worthy cause,” Locke said in the release, “but we are also excited to support a group of young adults working to find solutions to their company’s problems. Volunteerism is something we encourage, especially in our young people, our future leaders.”
