The following article, written by Shanon Quinn, appeared on the cover of the Moscow Pullman Daily News Today!
Logos Students Package 10,000 Meals for Local Food Banks
The sizable gymnasium at Logos School was alive with activity Thursday as groups of students worked with a cheerful readiness only youth are capable of, packaging and labeling 10,000 soup mixes for donation to food banks in Latah and Whitman counties and even as far north as Spokane.
The K-12 students, in matching T-shirts declaring the name of the day-long project, Feed the Need, measured, mixed and bagged their product at 14 tables equipped with funnels and measuring implements.
The event, sponsored by Family Promise of the Palouse and Mike Church at Key Properties, is the first of its kind at Logos, but the school’s director, Gene Liechty, said he hopes to make it an annual one.
The school partnered with Homestead Ministries, a nondenominational, faith-based volunteer organization that seeks to support local agriculture while finding solutions to reduce hunger locally and regionally. The ministry, based on the Palouse, was formed less than three months ago by Tom Reidner and Greg Nolan.
Reidner said the packaging event is the fourth of its kind they have done since the group’s inception.
“We’ve worked with a Catholic school in Colton, Boy Scouts in Genesee and students at Washington State University,” he said.
The ministry purchased 20 package sealers for the event, heavy plastic bags for packaging and supplied the peas, beans, lentils and spices the children used in packaging their soups.
“The peas and lentils are local,” said Reidner, who is a grain supplier. “But we had to order the beans from Wisconsin, because we don’t grow them around here.”
Between community volunteers – some of whom took vacation days from work in order to assist at the event – ministry volunteers, school faculty, staff and the student body, the group had packed more than 7,000 meals by the time they broke for lunch.
By 2 p.m., the scoreboard read 9,000.
And excitement didn’t wane among the students.”This has been exhilarating,” Danny Bradley, an 11th-grade student said. “It’s great to be giving back to the community.”
Liechty said events like Feed the Need are the reason Logos exists as a Christian school. “This gets to the heart of why we’re here,” he said. “We’re teaching them about need, then helping them meet the need. We’re not only working to educate the mind, but to grow the heart.”
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