Hersey High School’s Service Over Self Club (SOS) held its 56th food drive this month and it came at a crucial time. As families across the region face delays in SNAP benefits and rising food insecurity, food pantries are struggling to keep up with the demand.
Enter these energetic teens, who collected nearly 38,000 food items — nearly 6,000 more than last year — with all of it to be distributed to eight local food pantries.
Officials with the food pantry at Northwest Compass in Mount Prospect were thrilled with the “incredible delivery,” which Hersey students delivered Monday.
“Their dedication, compassion, positive attitude and energy are a powerful catalyst for change — and we feel inspired by their enthusiasm,” officials said on the organization’s Facebook page. “It’s a true privilege to have them as partners.”
The food drive is a long-standing Hersey tradition, which SOS members started the year moderator Wil Kozlowski started the club, in 1969. It involves students going door-to-door throughout the community in the fall to gather food and monetary donations.
“It’s important because there are so many people who need food now, especially since all of the cuts involving food,” says Hersey senior Aubrey Widmayer. “It’s really important that we collect these items to give to the pantries and our community.”
Mark Gunther, Hersey teacher and moderator of the SOS Club emphasized the deeper community connection fostered through the event: “Our pantries are in need. This event connects our kids to our community — collecting all these goods and giving them something worthy to give back.”
The drive reaffirms the mission of Will Kozlowski’s drive to engage high school students in their community, Gunther says.
“Wil Kozlowski started Service Over Self as a way for students to positively affect their community,” Gunther says. “He believed that high school students possessed powerful and untapped abilities to serve the needs of our community.”
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