I interviewed Meredith Clark from StuCo about what exactly the canned food drive is and what the results were for Shawnee Mission West. They earned more than double the amount of cans earned last year and made many families smile.

Ramona Mansour: What exactly is the can drive?

Meredith Clark: The can drive is something more than raising cans and money to help Johnson County Christmas Bureau. It’s helping our community and giving back to those who need it.

Mansour: How many cans were collected?

Clark: Our total was 12,500 which includes both cans and money. Two cans equals $1.00.

Mansour: How long did you collect cans?

Clark: three weeks.

Mansour: How much was collected last year?

Clark: I think about 4,000 to 5,000.

Mansour: What does this do for the community?

Clark: It benefits those in the community who do not have the money to buy groceries every week to feed themselves and their families.

Mansour: What does this do for SMW?

Clark: This helps SMW because it shows everyone it’s better to give than receive and it’s such a good feeling to help those who need it.

Mansour: What all did StuCo need to do to make this happen?

Clark: For the canned food drive to happen StuCo needed a lot of organization and people. We needed people to help at the car smash, safe trick or treat (where we collected cans), also exec board trick or treated for cans on Halloween and also on the weekends StuCo went and dropped off bags for neighborhoods to put cans in and then picked them up the next day.

Mansour: How much time did it take?

Clark: It’s hard to say how long it took because of all the events we did to collect cans and all the time we spent boxing cans but I would say 30+ hours.

Mansour: What were the positives and negatives?

Clark: There were a lot more positives than negatives. We beat our goal of how many cans we wanted to collect and we had new, fun events to raise cans. I can’t think of any real negatives that stand out to me.

Mansour: Were you happy with the outcome?

Clark: I would say everyone on StuCo and our advisers are really happy with how everything turned out this year. Making our goal… and beating it was really awesome!