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Community IMPACT
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hen The Nashville Food Project truck pulled up to Harpeth Hall in late September, a sidewalk filled with grocery bags, boxes, and food-filled bins awaited it.
So, too, did a group of excited students ready to do some heavy lifting. For two weeks, Harpeth Hall participated in a food drive to support The Nashville Food Project, a community organization founded by alumna Tallu Schuyler Quinn, Harpeth Hall’s 2020 Alumnae Spirit of Service Award recipient. The nonprofit serves hot, healthful meals to at-risk youth, refugees, members of the homeless community, and others throughout the city. One in seven Nashvillians do not have access to the food they want and need. Each week, The Nashville Food Project prepares and shares about 4,500 meals to fill that gap. Motivated by Hunger Action Month, Harpeth Hall’s Public Purpose Council rallied students to support The Nashville Food Project’s meals program. Bins inside the Upper School overflowed with bottles of extra virgin olive oil and bags of brown rice. A weekend drive-through, dropoff event inspired friends and neighbors to give huge boxes of bone broth and chicken stock. In all, Harpeth Hall families and the community donated more than 2,300 pounds of food. The students collected so many items that The
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HALLWAYS
Nashville Food Project truck had to make two trips to collect it all. More food would be collected from University School of Nashville and Ensworth, two local schools that partnered with Harpeth Hall in hopes of making the biggest food donation The Nashville Food Project had ever received. The food drive serves as one example of how Harpeth Hall students strive to make a difference. Though the COVID-19 pandemic has limited many in-person community impact opportunities throughout the city, Harpeth Hall’s Public Purpose program continues to engage in meaningful ways to do good. In the first few months of the school year, students not only collected thousands of pounds of food for The Nashville Food Project, they also made hundreds of masks to donate to the YWCA Weaver Domestic Violence Center and Room In The Inn. They baked dog treats to donate to Love at First Sight and walked down the wooded paths at Percy Warner Park filling garbage bags with litter to beautify our city’s outdoor spaces. “COVID-19 has impacted us individually in so many ways,” said Harpeth Hall senior Taylor Kappelman, who helped organize the food collection. “However, it is important to see the bigger picture on how it has impacted our community.”
