Students Bring Home a Win for their Neighbors through Tackle Hunger Campaign
This fall, high school students across the St. Louis region showed what a little friendly competition can do. Through Tackle Hunger, a partnership between Operation Food Search, 5 On Your Side, and Neighbors Credit Union, high schools and communities come together to see who can collect the most food for neighbors facing food insecurity.
Students encourage donations of shelf-stable food during the week, and the rival schools often face off in the big football game on Friday nights.
But local girls’ schools are proving to be the exception—though they don’t rally others around football games, they often lead the field in terms of collecting donations.
The results speak for themselves: together, the five participating girls’ schools collected 14,334 pounds this year. Notre Dame High School led the competition with 5,137 pounds of food. That’s the equivalent of 6,164 meals.
In second place was DeSmet Jesuit High School, with 4,602 pounds collected.
Across all participating schools, Tackle Hunger collected 33,518 pounds of food this year. In combination with food drives held through Neighbors Credit Union and 5 On Your Side, the campaign brought in $67,000 worth of food. The items are distributed to OFS partner agencies (pantries, shelters and community sites) and make up one of OFS’s largest food drives of the year.
In the past five years, Tackle Hunger has brought in more than 250,000 pounds of food with a value of more than $466,500 in nutritious meals provided for the community.
