Sonoma students volunteer at food bank

Presentation School’s fifth grade students spent the day volunteering at the Redwood Empire Food Bank in Santa Rosa on Feb. 27. The students bagged 4,500 pounds of fresh pears, which will feed 5,200 people.

“Driving home and listening to the kids talk about what a great field trip it was, they seemed impressed by the vast size of the (food bank) operation, the enormous amount of food that is donated from so many sources, the number of hungry people it helps – and how good it feels to serve. And how much fun they had serving together,” said parent Heidi Williams. She added that some of them wanted to skip lunch and keep bagging pears so they could do more “Please, I can see the bottom of the bin, I really want to finish,” Williams says she overheard them say.

The “value of the month” at Presentation was “service” and the field trip let the kids experience that value on multiple levels, serving an important organization which, in turn, serves so many others in the community.

“I learned that even if you have a car and a house, you still might have trouble paying for food,” said fifth grader Gemma Williams. “That makes me want to help out the community more, and invite my friends too... It makes me grateful that I have enough food to eat every day.”

Redwood Empire Food Bank serves more than 80,000 people a year.