Kiwanis students raise $5,000 to feed the hungry

K-Kids members selling smencils at lunch at Klager. Smencil sales raised $1,000 for Kids Against Hunger. Photo courtesy of Manchester Kiwanis.

Every year Kiwanis holds a Kids Against Hungry drive featuring fundraising on multiple fronts. The money raised is used to package individual shelf-safe meals that are distributed to the hungry in our region as well as around the world. The best part is that every June, Kiwanis brings in the Kids Against Hunger mobile packaging facility and all of the students in Klager get to help physically package the meals. This year, Kiwanis students raised more than $5,000, surpassing last year’s total of  $3,320 which means on June 2, Kiwanis members and Klager students will be able to package at least 18,500 meals!

Click here to read more about last year’s Kids Against Hunger meal packaging. 

One contributing factor to this year’s fundraising success was the introduction of a new Kiwanis organization at the elementary level. While Manchester has had a high school Key Club branch and a middle school Builders Club branch of the Kiwanis family for a while, this year they started an elementary branch, K-Kids, for 4th graders. K-Kids themselves raised $1,000 for Kids Against Hunger selling “smencils” – smelly (in a good way) pencils made of recycled material – at Klager lunches and Middle School Fun Nights.

All of Klager’s students participated in a coin drive to raise money to buy meals. It is hard to know if the presence of the K-Kids at the school or if the more competitive format instituted this year contributed to the increase over last year, but even with fewer students due to declining enrollment, Klager’s 1-week long coin drive brought in $2,511 which is almost 5 times the $520 brought in at the coin drive last year. While Ms. Yekulis’s kindergarten class ultimately came out the winners set to be awarded a bean bag chair for their classroom, all of the students will receive an extra recess with popsicles as a reward for their great job!

The Builders Club hosted its third annual Kids Against Hunger Games at the Middle School on April 1st. The entire student body spent an hour (by grade) in the gym participating and competing at the various activity stations including face painting, Hunger Games Trivia, Jail and Bail, an obstacle course, and a Capitol Design station. They could also use their tickets to enter the raffle for prizes which included gift cards, posters, Hunger Games merchandise and homework passes. More than $1,100 was raised for Kids Against Hunger.

The Key Club at the High School has held several bake sales to raise money for Kids Against Hunger. They also assisted Manchester Kiwanis at Crazy Cash and the Cider Sale in the fall for which they received some of the proceeds from the fundraisers and currently have raised $800 with another Bake Sale planned for the Canoe Race in May. Key Club volunteers also worked at the Kids Against Hunger Games at the middle school throughout the day.

All photos courtesy of Manchester Kiwanis: 

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by Sara Swanson

Sara Swanson is an editor, writer and founder of the Manchester Mirror.