As part of its mission to educate young women to make a difference in the world, Notre Dame Academy encourages its students to take part in community service regularly. Many of NDA’s service events have become annual traditions including the very impactful November canned food drive.
This annual service event began in 2010 when NDA Student Council members wanted to do something to help fill the shelves of a local St. Vincent de Paul food pantry. The NDA community collected nearly nearly 16,000 canned goods that first year and NDA’s Student Council has continued to organized a successful canned food drive each year since.
Our Pandas did not let a global pandemic or a transition to remote learning stop them from collecting canned goods to feed the hungry this winter. They were creative in their efforts for this year’s CANdemonium and were able to collect 1,949 canned goods along with $275 to support their efforts. This year’s donations may not have been the highest number of canned goods collected in a single year but the 2020 contributions are possibly the most impressive yet. Students generously dropped off their canned goods at school without any incentive of a friendly competition or out-of-uniform perk. Since students were learning remotely during the majority of the canned food drive, they had to go out of their way to drop off their donations outside of the school day.
This year’s collections of canned goods also pushed the total number of items donated to St. Vincent de Paul by NDA students since 2010 to over 90,000! That is quite a difference our Pandas have made in feeding the hungry over the past eleven years.
“We are very proud of our students ability to think of others during this challenging time,” said NDA Principal, Mr. VonHandorf. He added, “Our students are true servant leaders focused on our 2020 theme, Uniting Humankind as Reflections of God’s Love.”