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School’s Food Drive Declared A Success

Island Pacific Academy once again celebrated Thanksgiving by spreading holiday cheer with others who may be less fortunate with its annual food drive to benefit Hawaii Foodbank. Students, faculty and parent volunteers collected a total of 8,821 pounds of food.

After stocking up a caravan of cars with the donations, volunteers drove downtown to deliver the goods. IPA parent Lisa Bendall was the first to arrive and reported that the food bank was thrilled to see how much the school had to donate.

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Students help load a school bus with food donations, while still other nonperishable items also filled several cars to capacity. Photos from Bernadette Axelrod.

“When food bank staff saw how many cars full of food came in behind me, and then the bus, they were just amazed,” Bendall stated. “They kept saying ‘thank you’ over and over and just couldn’t believe how a small school like ours could collect so much food.”

The food drive is organized each year by the academy’s student government under the guidance of humanities teacher Ben Murphy.

“We started the year with a new slogan of ‘One Community, One Commitment’ because we really wanted everyone – students, parents, teachers, staff – to know and feel we are ‘One Community’ here at IPA working together for the same purpose,” stated head of school Benjamin Feinstein.

“The food drive involved everyone at the school, and when our community works together to achieve something, we can do great things.”