By Meena
This year for Intensive Learning, eighth grade students from Moorestown Friends School get to focus on the cruel challenge of food insecurity around the world. The first day of our Intensive Learning experience was the Day of Service. This is a day where students primarily focus on being of service to those who need it in many different ways. We arrived at school around 8 a.m. and headed straight to the Red Gym where our teachers announced the itinerary for the day and the goals they had for the class. The objective we had was to make the guests of the local food pantry feel supported and cared for.
The first activity students got to partake in was arts and crafts. We were given the option to create placemats or center pieces for the meal tables at the pantry. I consider myself to be a really creative person, so I decided to make centerpieces. To me, making centerpieces sounded like a chance to be artistic and innovative. The students who chose to make centerpieces were given instructions to gather in the classroom of one of our teachers. A couple of the teachers had picked out inspirational pictures of paper flowers, which is what they hoped for us to make. Once I made about three flowers I stuck them into a toilet paper roll that was covered in tissue paper to keep them together as a bouquet. I think my flowers turned out really nice, and I’m hoping that whichever guest of the pantry receives it, likes it too.
After arts and crafts, the grade as a whole headed into the auditorium to finish watching a documentary about food insecurity, A Place at the Table. We had started this documentary a couple weeks ago and now had a good chunk of time to finish it! I think it was the perfect time because it got us into the correct mindset for the rest of the day where we were focused on working together to combat hunger in our local area. The documentary changed my perspective on food insecurity and made me realize the urgency of the issue and how big of an impact it has had on many people’s lives. There are so many downwind effects morally, politically, socially, and economically if people in our society aren’t able to provide healthy food regularly to our citizens.
The second half of the day after lunch was a more hands-on experience. The class was split into two groups. One group would walk over to the local food pantry that we were working with, the First Baptist Church, and learn about how the pantry is able to help its guests and what it is like for volunteers and others who work there. The other group would make sandwiches for the pantry. I was in the group that attended the pantry first. It took us around 5 minutes to walk over to the building. Although it was a very cold and windy 5 minutes, it was definitely worth it because I got to truly see all of the amazing things the church is doing to help those in need. Out of the many ways they are being of service, my favorite way was how they displayed a box outside of the building that holds a variety of food. This is called the Blessing Box. It holds food for people in need to take when the pantry isn’t open. I thought this was a very clever idea because it’s obvious that the pantry cannot be open at all times of every day, and this ensures that people can still get what they need without being personally assisted by someone.
When we got back to school, we immediately started making sandwiches. I don’t remember how many sandwiches our grade made in total, but I know that it was around 450. The last thing we did on Friday was go into a peaceful worship. This was just like every Thursday where we usually have a meeting for worship for 45 minutes, except it was only with the eighth grade this time. We got to sit in silence and reflect on the remarkable day that we had. As I reflected on my day, I was thinking about how my favorite part was most definitely arts and crafts. I got to help people while also doing something that I enjoyed. Knowing that I put a smile on peoples faces makes me smile. I look forward to the rest of my Intensive Learning experience this coming week especially because it’s my last year of Intensive Learning in middle school.