For the 26th consecutive year, the students and staff at Menlo Atherton High School came together to feed our community. Preparation for MAHS' Distribution Day began in August and culminated on 12/7/24 at EHP, where MAHS students and staff gathered to distribute 250,000 pounds of food to families in need. What a tremendous effort! Thank you MAHS!
Following is an article from Palo Alto Online, written by Jennifer Yoshikoshi. M-A distributes 250K lbs. of canned food in EPA Palo Alto Online By Jennifer Yoshikoshi In the early hours of Saturday, Dec. 7, hundreds of students and staff at Menlo-Atherton High School worked to distribute 250,000 pounds of canned food to about 326 families at Ecumenical Hunger Program in East Palo Alto. This year is the 26th anniversary of the day known as Distribution Day. The late former football and wrestling coach Ben Parks, who died in 2011, started the M-A tradition in 1999. “What I love about this day is that the teenagers from Menlo-Atherton High School and others come out to help serve the East Palo Alto community,” said Mike Amoroso, M-A’s student activities director. “Most specifically, we feed our own families, the M-A families that attend their school.” Distribution Day serves as a bridge between the M-A and East Palo Alto communities, said Intercultural Leadership Program Advisor and Conflict Mediator Karina Flores, who graduated from M-A in 2007. “It’s amazing to see students come together and for a lot of them it’s their first time helping out so just seeing them in a different light is amazing,” Flores added. Students have been preparing for Distribution Day since August, organizing the event with Ecumenical Hunger Program and placing food orders with Grocery Outlet and Second Harvest of Silicon Valley, said Abbie MacLeod, an M-A senior and co-committee lead for Distribution Day. Throughout November, students volunteered to stand outside local grocery stores asking community members to donate food or money for the canned food drive. On Distribution Day, students arrived as early as 6 a.m. to prepare for the event. MacLeod said she was so excited that she had trouble sleeping the night before. “It felt like Christmas Day,” she said. Distribution Day teaches students about a work ethic and the ability to give others and help feed the local community, said Amoroso. “Legendary Coach Parks used to say, ‘If you give with love, it will be received with love,’” he said. Students expressed joy from their experience volunteering and many said they would love to continue giving back in the future. “Even when I’m in college, if I’m for Thanksgiving or Christmas break, I’m definitely gonna show up to help out the community and see some old faces. I think it’s a great way to continue your connection with M-A,” said Gaelen Booth, an M-A junior. Distribution Day is one day out of the year that M-A comes together to serve the community but, “this is the kind of stuff we see on campus every day, all the time, is our students supporting each other and loving each other and taking care of each other,” said M-A Librarian Catherine Burton-Tillson.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
EHP HappeningsKeep current by linking with our RSS feed! Categories |