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Student Council at Leadership Camp, Fall 2009	An "accident" at leadership camp	Lunch time at Grade 9 Funday 2009

It’s cold and it’s windy, these are the conditions that a group of Orchard Park students were put through on Friday and Saturday of last week when they headed out to collect canned goods for the Stoney Creek Food Bank. From Stoney Creek Central all the way to Winona, this group of OP students set out for a mission. Friday night was the start date of the mission. From 6-8pm these students went door to door starting from the central area and worked their way up to the plateau. As Friday night came to an end, the group managed to collect 418 non-perishables. Though, the night ended, the mission was still in progress. Saturday afternoon, the group continued from 4pm – 7pm, but this time in Winona. As the day progressed, the group soon found that the trunk quickly filled up with more and more non-perishables. Determined and goal orientated, the group ended their final day of collection with 431 non-perishables, making a grand total of 850 non-perishables collected in those 2 days. The group would like to thank all those who donated to their canned good drive. “It is amazing to see such a great turn out with the amount of food we collected, I am really happy that the community is willing to donate, since during these times food banks are often running very low.” says Student Council President Susan Dang. The group of consisted of Susan Dang, Joanne Tan, Omair Lone, Gagandeep Gill, Saba Ghahari, Sukhbir Thind, Jasmine Dhaliwal, Jasmine Sran, Emily Clark, Gurpreet Rai, Zac Young, Grant Durfey and Trevor Kearse. A tremendous thank you goes out to the Stoney Creek Central and Winona residents for their contributions, all were appreciated. The collection will be heading over to the Stoney Creek Local Food Bank this week. In December Orchard Park’s student council will again canvas the community around the school for canned food, watch for a flyer in your mailbox.

STUDENT'S FOOD DRIVE IS "CAN"TASTIC FOR COMMUNITY!

Billie-Jo Horvath, a student at Orchard Park Secondary

On Thursday December 6th students from Orchard Park Secondary School fanned out into the neighbourhood around the school to collect about 800 non-perishable food items.

The O.P. food drive has been an annual tradition with students at O.P. for as long as anyone can remember, however this is only the second year in a row that O.P. students have gone into the community to collect donated food. In late November student council members delivered flyers to the homes around O.P. to advise them of the December 6th collection date. Then on the 6th a group of volunteers and student council members met in a family studies room for a quick meal of pizza, hot chocolate and Christmas cookies before setting out into the cold to collect food. From the warm school students set out in groups, wagons in tow, to different parts of the neighbourhood a round O.P. “ We really didn’t think about the cold too much, the students were focused on the good they were doing for people in their own community.” says Mr. Paul a student council advisor at Orchard Park.

The food collected in the community along with the food collected at the school will be given to the Stoney Creek Food Bank. Last year the students at Orchard Park collected about 4000 items. This year they hope to beat that record. “We are encouraging all students at Orchard Park to participate. Homeroom classes are competing with each other to bring in the most items and win a pizza party for their class. At the Winter Wonderland Dance students get $1 off if they bring in a canned food.” says Jaimie Biederman a grade 12 student at Orchard Park. So far the school has raised about 1000 items but their campaign is just getting started. “The community food drive was a huge success this year and we would like to thank all the people in the Orchard Park community who helped support it by donating food or money” said Hayley Proudfoot, student council president at Orchard Park. The food drive will continue at Orchard Park right up to the last day of school on December 21st. If you would like to donate non-perishable food items they can be dropped off at the school’s office.