Students in the Purdue University North Central Dean's Leadership Group stepped forward to collect donations to put together Thanksgiving food baskets to ensure that their fellow students and their families enjoy a traditional family meal at Thanksgiving.
For the past few years, members of the Dean's Leadership Group (DLG) have spent the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving raising money and collecting donations for the food basket. They collected donations of non-perishable food at both the Westville campus and Valparaiso location, they collected cash contributions and they sold paper turkeys for $1 to raise money to purchase frozen turkeys and other necessary items. Each basket will provide a Thanksgiving meal for a family of five. The families will receive additional food items so that the families will have nutritious food items to last past Thanksgiving.
One of the missions of the DLG is to help out on campus and in the community throughout the year. This is one of many projects the students will undertake.
Kara Moon, a Morgan Township High School graduate, helped lead this year's food drive. She is a senior looking forward to graduating in May and has been a part of the Thanksgiving food baskets project since her first semester on campus. "This means a lot to me to be a part of the food drive. I enjoy doing this so that I can help others," said Moon. "The support we've gotten from the campus is amazing."
The Circle K Club, Rotaract and MBA students have all made significant donations and the DLG students sold a significant number of paper turkeys to students, faculty and staff.
"We had many generous donors," said Samantha Kinds, of Hamlet, a Human Resources major. "We had one $50 donation and several $20 donations."
Grace Houser, of Valparaiso, said that coordinating a food drive is something she would have done on his own if DLG hadn't offered one. "There are a lot of people out there we could be helping," she said.
DLG member Michal Krol, of Michigan City, agreed that leading a food drive was a good decision for the DLG members. "We decided as a group that this was something we wanted to continue doing. We are happy with the outcome."