Schools

School project turns into a helping hand

The two Springstead High School juniors rounded up 2,200 cans of food for the needy.

By PAULETTE LASH RITCHIE, Times Correspondent
Published December 22, 2007

SPRING HILL - It started out as a school project. It turned into a mountain of help and hope for neighbors in need.

Springstead High School juniors Ryan Nelson and Landon Etchison are both 16 and classmates in a marketing management course. They also belong to DECA, the Distributive Education Clubs of America, an international group of students studying marketing, management and entrepreneurship.

Nelson and Etchison needed to do a project for a DECA competition and they decided to team up on a community service effort. "We decided on a canned food drive," Nelson said.

Having only 21/2weeks, the duo got the school involved. "We sent a memo to all the teachers in the school," Nelson said. "We called the contest Cans for Christmas," and they offered as incentive a pizza party to the class that brought in the most cans.

The pair hoped to collect a respectable number of cans. They wound up with more than 2,200 of them.

Nelson and Landon pointed out the help they received from marketing manager teacher and DECA adviser Bill Vonada, a school coach, and marketing teacher Mike Feola, also an adviser.

"We had a lot of help from Coach," Nelson said, adding that they appreciated all the help they received from classmates who collected, carried and counted cans with them.

The food is being distributed among organizations and individuals within Hernando County, with the two biggest beneficiaries being Jericho Road Ministries, a group that provides shelter and support for men dealing with addictions, and the Mariner United Methodist Church.

Nelson and Etchison are now working on a 30-page documentation of their project for the contest, but after a delivery to Jericho, they realized it had turned out to be more than just a school project.

"We both said we feel really good about ourselves for having done this," Nelson said.

Paulette Lash Ritchie can be reached at eduritchie@yahoo.com.

[Last modified December 21, 2007, 20:56:10]