Landscaping

When I consider what has most shaped me in my first 18 years of life, I think of my family, friends, sports, and schooling, but something so ingrained in me is the community where I grew up. This is where I first learned the meaning of what a community is and how it shapes the world we live in. I began to recognize this

Giving back to the community is not just something that consists of donating a few dollars to a local choice. That is was makes service great, we are able to do different kinds of work that fit our personality better. This is why I have started a Community Food Drive for my neighborhood. This was something that interested me because it got me to interact with hundreds of different people, that ordinarily I would not have been able too. I got the idea one day driving home from a University of Delaware football game; it was something that just came to me. It was nearing the Thanksgiving Holiday and I just started to think about how lucky I was to have a warm home and an abundance of food to enjoy during the Holidays. It got me thinking about it would feel to be able to brighten one family's spirits during this time of season. When undertaking this project, I did not realize just how much work I was going to need to put into it, to make it become a reality. There were things such as securing sponsor that would be able to donate brown paper lunch bags that I could pass out to my neighbors. There was the process of composing a letter explaining what I was trying to accomplish, and finally taking those letters and paper bags and stapling them together and passing them out to the 300 houses in my community. Like with any project undertaking, we all will face challenges, this is to be expected because nothing and no one is perfect. The food drive I conducted faced the normal struggles and challenges any one might face when trying to single handedly organize something that is going to reach over 300 people. Some of the struggles that I overcame in the first couple years was the inability to gain sponsors for my event. I went around to local business and a lot of them were less then willing to give away some of there inventory to a high school student. But I was lucky enough to have found two different places of businesses that were willing to give me an ample amount of brown paper bags for me to use. By the third year of the food drive these places were now expecting me to ask, one even was willing to donate 500 total bags so I could pass extra out in order to spread the word. Another struggle I came to face was the fact that the bags I used in year one of the food drive, were not big enough to donate a can good. I asked each neighbor to donate one can good from their pantry, but 90 percent of my community wanted to give more, but the bag was not big enough for two or three cans. This was a problem that was solved in the following years with the use of bigger bags; this is turning boosted my pounds collected because we all were now able to give more. This is how I came to the idea of doing a food drive, but the amazing part about it was the rapid growth we achieved in the three short years it has been around.

I like to compare my food drive to that of a local pizza shop, the people in a one mile radius know they have good pizza, but they are not big enough to advertise about how good their pizza is. But they soon have a cult following and become relatively successful because of loyal eaters. This is how my food drive has come to be, I am the small fish in the big pond. Everyone knows about the impersonal food drives that are run at the local grocery stores, these are put on by large organizations with no connection to the people they are helping. That is what has been different about my food drive, I went door to door pitching the idea of a food drive to my neighbors, they were able to see one person trying to make a difference, and hopefully this inspired them to also give back. This is what has lead to the rapid growth of the Wood Creek Holiday Food Drive; people are more inclined to donate to a something that is more personal then just a cardboard box at the exit of Acme. To give an understanding on how big the food drive has grown in three years, my first year I ran it, we collected almost 500 pounds of food, just this past Thanksgiving my total poundage came out to be 997 pounds of food. I doubled the amount collected in just two years, this was incredible, considering my school conducts a similar food drive at school and they raised 3000 pounds, but they also have over 1100 different people that are able to donate.

My food drive has been ever changing since the inception; I have been able to learn from my mistakes just to make it better. I also have had the opportunity for it to grow, which has to be the most satisfying part of my service. This is one of reasons I keep doing it. It feels great to be able to donate over 2000 pounds