For nearly seven years, FFA students at National Trail High School have been helping provide hundreds of families in need with the necessities for a meal they can cook over the holiday season. This year students packed these “Bags of Hope” on Tuesday, Nov. 14.
Eddie Mowen Jr. | The Register-Herald
Eddie Mowen Jr. | The Register-Herald
Eddie Mowen Jr. | The Register-Herald
Eddie Mowen Jr. | The Register-Herald
Eddie Mowen Jr. | The Register-Herald
Eddie Mowen Jr. | The Register-Herald
Eddie Mowen Jr. | The Register-Herald
Eddie Mowen Jr. | The Register-Herald
Eddie Mowen Jr. | The Register-Herald
Eddie Mowen Jr. | The Register-Herald
Farm Credit Mid America has helped out with the bags for several years.
Eddie Mowen Jr. | The Register-Herald
Eddie Mowen Jr. | The Register-Herald
Eddie Mowen Jr. | The Register-Herald
National Trail FFA members packed meals for 500 families on Tuesday, Nov. 14.
Eddie Mowen Jr. | The Register-Herald
Eddie Mowen Jr. | The Register-Herald
Eddie Mowen Jr. | The Register-Herald
NEW PARIS — For nearly seven years, FFA students at National Trail High School have been helping provide hundreds of families in need with the necessities for a meal they can cook over the holiday season. This year students packed these “Bags of Hope” on Tuesday, Nov. 14.
“We have this year 150 kids in the ag program and we have around 70 of them in the gym right now packaging food,” FFA Advisor Eric Kennel said. “It’s ninth grade through 12th grade. All the kids work together on this. We talk about the recipes. We talk a lot about community service, how we help them, helping those families in need, and what we can do to just make their holidays and their weeks to come a little bit easier. Maybe one meal that they don’t have to think about.”
“As we go through and we work with the community organizations, finding financial supporters that will help, and finding grant money is a little challenging,” Kennel said. “But we in the FFA itself value trying to provide food back because that’s where our program kind of generates from. This year Rural First and Farm Credit Mid America for sponsored the event and we were able to provide one meal, a Southwest soup, all the ingredients for that recipe in a bag. That’ll be for 500 families, one bag per family. So, lots of people are getting fed through it, and only here in Preble County, in all school districts.”
“I think we’re servicing the bulk of the families that are in need of it. Some families do receive two or three bags. So that’s why until we get to the point to where people were like, ‘Hey, we actually ran out I think we’ll hold off on (increasing) our number (500 bags.) And the logistics side of it is, the cost of food just keeps increasing so it gets harder for us to secure those funds.”
Sometimes the FFA members find they are helping classmates.
“In my classes, I really talk about the scenario where we have a student at school that might get one of our bags, and how do we interact with those kids as far as how we engage in conversation with them, because some kids don’t want you to know that they have those bags. Other kids, we’ve had it to where a non-FFA kid has turned around and thanked an FFA member for packaging those bags,” Kennel added.
“In class I always talk about, we just we just don’t carry on those conversations afterwards. So that way that person knows they can trust us.” Kennel said. “We want to always make sure that our families we help understand that we truly support them, and they trust us with what we’re doing. We honestly don’t know any of the families who get our bags. We work with the community liaisons through our school district and local food pantries. So, we honestly don’t know. We just know there’s 500 families that needed assistance.”
The bags are disbursed with the help of churches and food pantries with the help and coordination of the school Success Liaisons and outreach liaisons, who help allocate the 500 bags.
Farm Credit Mid America has helped out with the bags for several years.
“When we started off it was baskets. We tried to put it in baskets,” Kennel said. “And we learned and we kind of modified and it (bag) was easier to move maneuver. It was easier for families, and we started with the bags and now Farm Credit donates the bags and this year they sponsored the actual food as well. Each year, Farm Credit, has the last three years sponsored the bags and donated the bags to us.”
“Farm Credit is an amazing organization to work with, Farm Credit and Rural First,” Kennel said. “We have alumni members that work there. But the organization itself wants to help the people that support them as far as a financial institution, but also, they’re an ag-based company so they want to help the roots of their company as well. And it’s people who live in our community that do this.”
“I think the biggest piece I, as a teacher, as an FFA advisor, as a parent, I think it’s important for our families to know that our students at the high school level really want to help the community. It’s impressive to me to watch kids volunteer to come down. And some could argue they get an activity point for being an FFA member. But an activity point — a lot of these kids out here probably have 10 to 15 activity points already. And only need three. So it’s not really that. “It’s that they truly want to help the community and when they do I think it just makes better people in society down the road just by helping and understanding.
“I think there’s a loss of volunteerism just in general. People don’t want to volunteer anymore for anything. And this is a way they can step up and do it here in school and have means to do that.”
