Edison & Chalmers
Record-Breaking Food Drive E
very November, GISD participates in the annual Thanksgiving food drive for VISTO. VISTO is a valuable asset to Cooke County, providing food, financial assistance, and education to families who need it most.
This year, our Edison and Chalmers students, families, and staff collected items for the food pantry as well as the Backpack Buddy program. They knocked it out of the park and set new campus and district records!
One of the many services they offer that directly benefits our GISD students is the Backpack Buddy program, which provides backpacks full of delicious, nutritionally dense mini-meals to children in Cooke County. The goal of the program is to deliver two days worth of meals to children who have been identified by school officials as being “at risk” for hunger. In 2020, VISTO provided meals to 674 children in 15 different Cooke County schools!
Edison collected 27,030 items (weighing 8,550 lbs!) and Chalmers collected 10,100 items (5,648 pounds!) of food. In total, GISD elementary campuses collected 37,130 items weighing 14,198 pounds!
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• Gainesville SPOT SPOTlight light • Winter 2021
Thank you to the Gainesville Fire Department for loading up all the food and delivering it to VISTO.
