St. Francis Students Deliver Food to Local Pantry

Fifty-eight fourth-graders helped deliver $400 worth of donated food from to the St. Vincent de Paul Food Pantry Thursday.

The project was a joint venture between the school and Peapod, which offers the donations through its "Kids Give Back" program. Sara Brown, marketing associate with the Lake Zurich-based business, said a Peapod representative visited the school to talk to students about making smart food choices.

St. Francis students then worked in small groups to each choose $40 worth of food from the Peapod site, totaling $400. Peapod delivered the food Thursday, and the students helped carry the items into the food pantry at the .

"It's been a great teaching experience," said teacher Barbara Augustine. Teacher Nancy Loud and teacher's aide Patti Thomas also helped with the project.

Augustine said she hopes the students learned about the importance of "giving back to the community and realizing how fortunate they are."

She said while students perform service projects like food drives and the annual mitten tree, "with this one here, they really had that vested interest." Though students didn't have to raise the money to buy the food, they had to do all of the online shopping, Augustine said.

Evan Bajerski said it was neat to learn about Peapod. Gretchen Greeby added that it was fun to learn about how to choose better food.

Students found the experience both sad and uplifting.

"It makes me sad," said Chase Woodson. "It's hard to know that people can't get money to afford to buy food."

"It's nice to know that kids will get to eat this yummy food," added Maddie Divane.