A team of 5th grade students at Dewey Elementary School in Evanston organized a food drive this spring and have set up a non-perishable food pantry outside the school.
Tanushri Sengupta, one of the parents who helped the students with the project, says the project has collected enough food to hopefully keep the pantry stocked through the summer.
“But it’s meant to be self-sustainable with help from the community,” Sengupta says, with a “give some and take some” model.
The food pantry project was one of this year’s Dewey Doers projects for 5th grade students. Sengupta says she and the other parent volunteers, Beth Higgins and Jessica Isaac, started meeting with the students late last fall to plan the project.
The students have also donated some of the extra food they collected to Family Focus and the Hillside Food Pantry.