© 2024 WVIK
Listen at 90.3 FM and 98.3 FM in the Quad Cities, 95.9 FM in Dubuque, or on the WVIK app!
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Community

Students Feed the Hungry

Young people in this area have once again helped collect food for people in need. Late last week, students from 17 high schools celebrated the end of the 33rd annual Student Hunger Drive by delivering thousands of pounds of food to the River Bend Foodbank in Davenport.

President and CEO Mike Miller says they collected enough food and money to provide 624,000 meals. But he thinks the importance of the yearly drive goes far beyond how much food is collected.

"We've got an entire generation of quad citizens whose perspective on hunger has changed because of their experience in high school. And that's hard to replicate because that's 30 years of adults who are now engaged in food pantries and helping the food bank and putting an end to hunger because of the experience they first had in high school."

Miller says the hunger drive now emphasizes the nutritional quality of the food collected.

"A couple years ago we asked the kids to remember the one in five of their classmates who don't have enough food and think about what they would like to eat. So while the numbers aren't what they were a decade ago, we think we're getting more nutritious food than ever."

Following their merger last spring, this was the first year the Student Hunger Drive was staffed by the River Bend Foodbank - in the past the drive had been a separate, charitable organization.

River Bend supports 300 food pantries and meal sites in 23 Iowa and Illinois counties. 

A native of Detroit, Herb Trix began his radio career as a country-western disc jockey in Roswell, New Mexico (“KRSY, your superkicker in the Pecos Valley”), in 1978. After a stint at an oldies station in Topeka, Kansas (imagine getting paid to play “Louie Louie” and “Great Balls of Fire”), he wormed his way into news, first in Topeka, and then in Freeport Illinois.