by Xypher Pino

Recently, on October 7, the Greensboro College Honors program concluded their week-long food drive, collecting non-perishable items to be contributed to the Spartan Open Pantry at UNCG. With the help of Dr. Robert Brewer, Mrs. Polly Anton and Dr. Henry Kuo, the donation event was organized and led by Honors students Luke Butner and me.

The food drive was a success – faculty and students generously donated over 100 food items in the span of a week. There were 59 canned goods, 34 boxed goods and 14 bagged goods that were collected.

“The results were fantastic! We collected a lot of food. We were truly blessed to have gotten the amount of food that we got,” said Butner, after counting all the food items that were donated.

I expected that we would get some donations, but nowhere close to what we ended up with. Honestly, the first couple of days were rough, I think we only had one or two cans. By the end of the week though, donations just kept coming in. I was extremely happy when we came by on the last day of the food drive and I saw everything that we had.

Due to the food drive’s success, Luke and I plan to undertake this project once again. We plan to do it next semester, just before spring break. If the food drive produces similar results or better, Luke stated that he wants to “continue this tradition for years to come.”

“We are trying to turn our food drives into a biannual tradition, even after Xypher and I both leave GC,” Butner said. “We believe that by turning this into a tradition, it will help both the Greensboro community and GC students. A steady stream of food will be supplied to the Spartan Pantry, and students will continue to organize future events, giving them leadership experience!”

Next semester’s food drive will essentially be the same. It will last for a week, from February 27 to March 3, and it will be hosted by the George Center for Honors House again. The only thing that will be different is the advertising process.

While I think we did an OK job advertising this semester’s food drive, we can definitely do a lot more. The flyer was great, we will do that again for sure, but we will sit at the tables in front of the cafeteria a week or two before the food drive begins and let people know about the event. We will also try to email everyone about the event, if possible. Just know we will try a lot of things to make everyone aware of the food drive.

Luke and I are extremely excited for the future food drive, and we are hoping that everyone else is just as excited as we are. Projects like these can bring the GC community together and form an even tighter bond between our students and faculty. If everything goes according to plan, we might just be witnessing the beginning of a great tradition here at Greensboro College.