Green Bay East students hold Eats for East food drive

GREEN BAY, WI- (WGBW) – Seventy percent of Green Bay East High School students are on free or reduced lunch. Their fellow students saw the need and wanted to help. The students hold the Drive-Up, Drop-off Food Drive for the Eats for East Pantry each year. This year’s drive is Wednesday and Thursday. 

Student Council Advisor Matthew Vanden Houten said students have been working to help their less fortunate classmates since the COVID pandemic lockdown. The students were so passionate about the project that it become an annual event.

“They really want to be involved. They were trying to figure out something they could do because we were on COVID lockdown,” Vanden Houten said. “We came up with this food drive. So we socially distanced and had it, and they decided to keep it every year!”

With the Eats for East Pantry, students are provided with healthy food over the weekend and on breaks. It’s not limited to school days.

“We have 70% of our students that are economically disadvantaged. That rely on our free breakfast or reduced breakfast and lunches. But when they go home on weekends – Sometimes they don’t know where the food’s coming from,” Vanden Houten said. 

“ This program is run through our social workers. They take requests from teachers. If we know my kid might be struggling, they take on the name. And then they will talk to the kids. Then it provides a bag of food for them on the weekend,” he continued. “It used to be a backpack, but backpacks can’t hold a whole lot. So they give a bag to kids to bring home on the weekend to get them through, because, obviously, being hungry is one thing that’s going to be a detriment to learning.”

Vanden Houten also uses the Eats for East Pantry to help teach students how to stretch their dollars.

“Look where the deals are! If you get them cheap and maybe it’s a limit of five, but you make your dollar stretch as far as you can,” Vanden Houten teaches them.

The Eats for East food drive will take anything non-perishable, but there is a list of items they need and want to see donated, such as peanut butter and jam, breakfast cereals, pancake mix and syrup, microwave dinners, and Maseca Corn Flour.

“Everyone’s real giving at this time of the year. You know, we’re coming up on a long break. The kids love it because it’s a long winter break. But that also means there’s a lot of time where kids may not have food because the free lunches, reduced breakfasts, and things like that are not available to them right now,” said Vanden Houten.

The East High School Drive-Up, Drop-Off Food Drive for the Eats for East Pantry is Wednesday, December 11th, and Thursday, December 12th, from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Donations can also be dropped off in the East High School main office between 7:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. this week.