When the sun went down Oct. 31 and Batman, Rambo, Cinderella, Casper the Ghost and sundry ballerinas and witches appeared in Salt Lake City neighborhoods, some of them were toting a lot more than candy.
Along with Tootsie Rolls and candy bars, many little goblins were carrying packages of spaghetti, cans of soup and boxes of Hamburger Helper.The children of Riley Elementary in the Salt Lake City School District were challenged by the PACE parent-cooperative to collect food for food banks.
PACE (Participating Adults and Children in Education) is a cooperative parent organization that offers an alternative to the traditional classroom. PACE members believe that the increased adult-per-child ratio will enhance their children's education. The PACE classrooms have three parent volunteers in the classroom at all times.
During this food drive many of the children also fasted one or more meals to try to understand what it feels like to go without food. Donations were brought to the school from home and were also collected by children trick-or-treating on Halloween. One week before Halloween, more than 360 food items had been collected.
Riley Elementary has traditional classes in kindergarten through sixth grade as well as five PACE classes. There are also three classes for the intellectually handicapped. All of the children have joined in the food drive.
Anne Jackson, service project coordinator for the PACE program at Riley Elementary, told the Deseret News, "With so much in the news media about the homeless and hungry, we thought this would be a meaningful project for the kids."
Children were given bright orange badges that announced they were collecting donations for local food banks. Since the PACE parent-cooperative program draws from the entire Salt Lake Valley, many children were collecting donations in their neighborhoods away from Riley Elementary.
Anne Jackson headed the project, and other volunteer workers were Coral Call, Cheri Pickett and Pat Fish.
The classroom collecting the largest number of donations will be treated to an ice cream party.
Earlier Wednesday, the PACE volunteers sorted the donations into categories and delivered them to the food bank. Because of Riley's pint-sized trick-or-treaters, many of Utah's hungry received a pre-Thanksgiving gift.