Approximately 70 members of the Rosarian Academy community participated in a large-scale gleaning effort on Saturday, April 11 to provide food for the less fortunate in Palm Beach County. Pre-school through eighth-grade students and families spent the morning picking an estimated 8,000 pounds of cucumbers that were delivered to the Palm Beach County Food Bank and then distributed to about 120 local agencies and shelters that feed the hungry in our community.
According to C.R.O.S. Ministries, approximately 200,000 people woke up this morning in Palm Beach County and didn’t know if they would have food.
“Facts such as this make the students and families feel great about the hard work of picking crops knowing that it is serving the beautiful purpose of feeding people in our very own community who may not otherwise eat,” said Patrick Hansen, a middle school teacher at the Rosarian Academy who coordinated the gleaning event for the school for the third year in a row.
Gleaning is important because an estimated 52 million pounds of produce on farms are wasted every year. C.R.O.S. Ministries, the event organizer, works with local farmers to allow volunteers to glean, or pick, the crops that are left after the harvest, which are perfectly edible but do not meet supermarket standards.
Through this meaningful community service project, the students experience the power of making a positive difference in the lives of the needy in our community.
Founded in 1925, the Rosarian Academy educates students in early childhood through eighth grade. For more information, visit www.rosarian.org or call (561) 832-5131.
ABOVE: Rosarian Academy students and families glean cucumbers in Boynton Beach. (Right) Sixth-grader Javier Keough fills a bucket of cucumbers.
