Throughout the month of November, NDB’s Key Club worked towards holding a successful Thanksgiving food drive in partnership with local non-profit One Life Counseling Center to provide Thanksgiving dinner to underprivileged families within the community.

One Life, located in San Carlos, is a non-profit organization which works in their community to provide individual and family counseling to those in need in the area.

“Our club chose to do this [drive] because we are a club focused on serving our community, and we thought that helping others celebrate a holiday where everyone deserves to experience a fulfilling meal would be a great way for our club to make an impact on our community,” said Key Club President Kristi Xia.

The first step of the project took place on November 4, when Key Club members brought in and decorated paper bags during a monthly lunch meeting. The bags were later used as part of the food drive to carry all goods brought in.

“I wasn’t able to volunteer at the food drive, but I had fun helping to decorate the bags,” shared club member Kaelin Kockos. “Even though it was a small gesture, it felt nice to be able to give back to my community in some way.”

Over the following two weeks, the club invited all NDB students to participate in the drive by bringing in perishable and non-perishable Thanksgiving sides, such as boxed stuffing and mashed potatoes, canned goods and dinner rolls. Key Club collected all the side dishes and One Life provided the turkeys for each bag.

The food drive took place in the evening on November 22 and was very successful, as Key Club was able to provide roughly 50 bags of food for families in the community. Students who participated were able to help gather food and have meaningful conversations with all who came to the center.

“Personally, I enjoyed this project a lot because we were able to physically be there and help make a difference,” said Xia. “Because of COVID-19, a lot of service opportunities are non contact, like writing letters or simply just donating to drives and having another organization deliver them. With this food drive we were able to actually decorate and package the bags, and help families carry the food to their car. It was very fulfilling to see how big of an impact that simply giving people a bag of groceries and a turkey for Thanksgiving made, and I loved meeting all the people that showed up… I learned that the kindness we give will always be passed on, and I hope that the others in our club were able to learn from this experience too.”