SV eighth-graders donate skills
JACKSON TWP — Seneca Valley Middle School students in Intro to Culinary Arts classes raised dough to help raise money for food for the needy last week.
The eighth-grade classes made and donated 120 loaves of bread last week for a soup dinner fundraiser called the Full Table Project.
Pottery classes at Seneca Valley Senior High School had earlier made more than 200 bowls for the event.
The Nov. 14 dinner at Grace Community Church in Cranberry Township raised more than $2,000, said Cindy Zonts, the church outreach director.
Zonts said, “People came in, paid $10 and chose a bowl to keep. The bowl serves as a tool to keep up awareness of hunger.”
The $500 to pay for the clay and glaze used in the bowls was donated by the Seneca Valley School Foundation, she said.
Brandon Jones, director of communications at Grace Community Church, said, “The objective of this event is to draw attention to hunger in this region. Our goal in doing this, and we are so happy that Seneca Valley was able to partner with us in making the bowls and baking the bread, is not only to raise awareness in the region and support some of our key ministry partners, but actually alleviating hunger in the greater Butler County region.
“And as a result, all proceeds from this event go to ministry partners and provide food to families in need,” Jones said.
He said the partners are the Lighthouse Foundation and Light of Life Rescue Mission.
The Lighthouse Foundation, Jones said, “offers food banks that serve 200 families on a weekly basis and also offers a produce-to-the-people program monthly for 400 people.”
Jones said Light of Life offers meals daily in outreach locations in Allegheny County.
Bowls of soup were accompanied by bread baked by the six culinary classes of family and consumer sciences teacher Deb Mitro, who is a member of Grace Community Church.
The class is a requirement for all eighth-graders.Class member Luke Trzeciak said, “The high schoolers made bowls for soup. They needed bread. Our teacher volunteered us to do it.”Trzeciak added that the classes made white bread loaves earlier as practice for the batch on Nov. 14. Usually what's made in the class gets eaten in the class as were the earlier bread loaves and the students' pancake assignment, he said.Classmate Alyssa Spears said, “It's the first time we've made something for someone else.”She said she was confident their bread offerings would go over well.Not all the students in the introductory classes are novice cooks.Emily Choban said, “My mom cooks a lot at home, so I've helped her all throughout my life.”Trzeciak said his cooking expertise runs more to “mac and cheese in a box and warming things up.”The three classmates said they have enjoyed the introductory cooking class.Choban said, “ It's a lot of fun. I've learned the proper way to measure things.”Spears said, “You don't have to take a test. The cooking part is the test, basically.”But the latest assignment was more than fun, they said.Spears said, “We are helping less fortunate people than us.”Lara DiFrischia, a teacher who delivered the classes' bread to the church, said, “If the church continues to do that, we will definitely participate.”Zonts said the church plans to do another fundraiser focused on Butler County hunger in the spring.Grace Community Church might ask the school district to take part, she said, adding that after all it was very easy to make it happen.“I just contacted them and asked if they would be willing to partner with us,” Zonts said.
