Scrapbook Stories

Spiritridge Panther Club
By Ben Furstman and Kieran Matz
The Panther Club at Spiritridge Elementary held a food drive for Hopelink. Our Panther Club is a community service club that strives to help the community.

We thought it was really awesome that we got to work in between Panther Club meetings to make posters, create scripts for morning announcements for the food drive and lots more to encourage people to bring food.

At first Spiritridge set out fifteen crates to be filled, but to our surprise we needed ten more crates and those boxes were filled to the brim too. Time was up, so we brought all the crates to Hopelink.

Getting our student body to bring food was very easy and it was exciting to watch the food pile. It was the best experience we have ever had.

A Gift For Hopelink

Vivek Gopalam, age 6, and his one-year-old brother, Vineet, recently celebrated their birthdays. Guests invited to their party were asked to make a donation to Hopelink. At the end of the party, Vivek's and Vineet's parents matched the $260 raised for a total donation of $520 to Hopelink. Vivek and his mother Anu brought in the check recently, plus some donated food and gifts.
Thank you, Vivek and Vineet.

Briarcrest Elementary Gets A Visit From The Sheriff

As a reward for meeting their End Summer Hunger fundraising goal (over $1,200!), the students at Briarcrest Elementary School in Shoreline got a rare treat in early June. The King County Sheriff's Department brought their Guardian One helicopter to the school grounds.

After presenting their End Summer Hunger check to Hopelink, the kids toured the helicopter and talked to the pilots. The Shoreline Enterprise newspaper sent a photographer and reporter to cover the event. The kids loved it!

Kate Ahearn's End Summer Hunger Project

Last summer my friends Gabrielle Gevers, Megan Ransome and I felt challenged to do something for the homeless people because we realized that they really are people without a home! I know that sounds like we should have known that, but the word homeless person has sort of accumulated kind of a "blind eye" aspect to it. When I used to hear that word I would sort of just try to not picture what it meant.

Then when my youth pastor challenged us to do something for them my friends and I really felt like we needed to do something! So when we heard about how End Summer Hunger helped kids who didn't have enough food to eat during the summer without the school free lunches and breakfasts we decided it would be really cool and great to help them!

I know adults sometimes have low expectations for teens but my parents and my friend's parents don't and they really encouraged us to go for it and said they were ready to be a full support team. We three put our heads together and choose to do two lemonade and bake sales to raise money. A lot of people who come to our L and B sale had never heard about End Summer Hunger and had never really thought about what happened to the kids from school during the summer... it was really cool to explain to people about Hopelink and get them considering what they could do! My friends and I raised $140 for Hopelink and we can't wait to do it again this summer and see if we can get more friends at our youth group to help! --Kate Ahearn