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Ag School Students Win $10,000 For Pacific Garden Mission

 Water, granola bars, hygiene products and other essentials were stuffed into 150 backpacks and handed out to homeless men and women at Pacific Garden Mission last month. The effort by students at Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences in Mount Greenwood has since netted the homeless outreach center $10,000 in charitable grants.
Ag School Fundraiser
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MOUNT GREENWOOD — Sometimes it's the smallest gestures that have the biggest impact.

For students at the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, that gesture was handing a drawstring backpack full of snacks and toiletries to homeless individuals gathered at the Pacific Garden Mission in the South Loop.

This simple act of generosity last month has been followed up by $10,000 in charitable grants for the homeless outreach center at 1458 S. Canal St.

The students learned their project called Backpack Foods won second place in the Lead2Feed World Hunger Leadership Challenge last week, according to JaMonica Marion, an agriculture education teacher at 3857 W. 111th St. in Mount Greenwood.

The Ag School was one of the first schools to sign on with the special curriculum that aims to teach students leadership through service projects designed to tackle hunger.

Since 2012, students at the school on the far Southwest Side have been using the team-based approach outlined by Lead2Feed to create such projects. The free program is based on the principles outlined in a book authored by Yum! Brands Executive Chairman David Novak.

Novak is the head of the company behind KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. He authored "Taking People With You" on Jan. 3, 2012. The concepts within the book have been translated into 10 Common Core-aligned lessons educators can customize for their classrooms.

This year, the 33 students in Marion's class brainstormed several ideas before settling on Backpack Foods. The project required them to secure donations of food and other items for the backpacks. They were also charged with teaching fellow students about the problem of hunger both worldwide and locally.

At the conclusion of the project, the students insisted on distributing the 150 backpacks themselves. They followed up with several hours volunteering at Pacific Garden Mission. The idea was to not just offer a handout but to meet-and-greet homeless men and women in Chicago.

In recognition of their efforts, the USA Today Foundation, the Lift a Life Foundation and Yum! Brands Foundation reached out to the Pacific Garden Mission with $10,000 in grants, further cementing the student's good deed.

These foundations all worked to develop Lead2Feed, which now operates in five schools throughout Chicago.

“After only three years in the Lead2Feed program, we are amazed to see the experiences this service-learning program has brought to students at Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences. Not only are they actively learning but they are learning important skills such as collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity,” said Diane Barrett, president of the USA Today Foundation.

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