Photo provided Richards students, left-right, Callie Allen, Felix Barajas, Grace McCullough and Hadley Andresen work on the CANstruction project.
With United Way of Bartholomew County moving away from its annual CANstruction competition, Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. has decided to take on the challenge this year.
Every BCSC elementary school has been collecting canned goods for a Community Food Drive being organized by United Way and the Bartholomew County Food Insecurity Coalition. Students will use the cans to build different designs in their schools’ STEM labs, said Director of Elementary Education Laura Hack.
“We’ll have opportunities for an electrical circuit design, we’ll have an opportunity for a Chromebook laptop design, a Pac-Man, a lightbulb — every STEM lab gets to choose their own design, and then their cans will reflect that,” she said.
Hack and BCSC Superintendent Jim Roberts will decide on a winner in late April. She’s not sure what the prize will be and added that this may be a one-year event.
The idea came about because Kelly Daugherty, executive director of Love Chapel, mentioned that CANstruction would not be taking place this year due to the work going on at NexusPark.
“We thought that this would be a gap that we could fill and another opportunity for our community to come together to support Love Chapel,” said Hack. “Love Chapel does so much for our students.”
Love Chapel provides food-filled backpacks for students who are at risk of not having enough to eat over the weekend. This service is provided to all 11 BCSC elementary schools, as well as Busy Bees and St. Peter’s Lutheran.
When the program first began three years ago, they were sending about 250 backpacks home with kids. This past December, they packed 710 in one week. Daugherty said care packages to schools have doubled in the past year.
“We wanted to give back as best we could,” said Hack. According to United Way, Love Chapel is one of three food pantries that will benefit from the community food drive.
Assistant to the Director of Elementary Education Chanda Welsh said that Daugherty is helping provide pallets and transportation for all cans collected at BCSC elementary schools.
In previous years, CANstruction was an event organized by United Way, with teams from local businesses and organizations building elaborate structures out of canned goods to raise donations for local food banks.
Over the years, the event resulted in more than 400,000 cans donated to local food banks and more than $15,000 in monetary donations given as online votes for the best creation, United Way officials said in 2022. People could also vote in person at the FairOaks Mall (now known as NexusPark) by donating their own canned goods to the cause.
Most years, CANstruction generated nearly 50,000 cans or more that were divided among local food pantries. Organizers collected a record of 61,218 cans in 2020.
Due to COVID-19 vaccines not being available at the time of event planning, CANstruction was limited to three teams in 2021.
The 2022 event was canceled due to a pandemic-related shortage of canned goods, with event organizers saying that the seven teams would still donate the cans they had collected prior to cancellation.
“CANstruction typically happens in February and was canceled this year for many reasons,” said United Way Volunteer Action Center Director Alicia Monroe. “Instead, we are doing a Community-wide Food drive during the month of April, in which the elementary schools have decided to participate by doing a CANstruction event at their schools.”
When asked if United Way had plans for CANstruction to return next year, Communications Manager Magen Pillar replied, “We do not anticipate bringing CANstruction back at this time.”
In discussing factors behind this decision, she said that the construction going on at NexusPark wasn’t “conducive” to holding CANstruction. Additionally, supply chain issues amid the pandemic has made it difficult in recent years for teams to get the items needed to complete their structures.
“We are grateful and thankful for all the CANstruction teams who brought their ingenuity to the event,” said Pillar. “Moving toward a Community Wide Food Drive structure allows more people to get involved and truly makes it a community event to help solve a community need.”
She said that United Way is “thrilled” that BCSC is supporting the drive in such a creative way.
According to Columbus Municipal Airport Director Brian Payne, the airport is also collecting cans for the community drive and will be building its own aviation-themed CANstruction creation.
The food drive is being done in partnership with the Bartholomew County Food Insecurity Coalition to ensure the community’s three local food pantries are “stocked in time to feed our children over the summer.” The drive runs for the entirety of April.
Donations will be split between Love Chapel, The Salvation Army and the Community Center of Hope. Organizers’ goal is to collect 200,000 pounds of food or the monetary equivalent to purchase that amount.
According to a promotional video about the drive, if everyone in the community gave just three cans, it would be “enough to feed the most vulnerable children in Bartholomew County.”
“The Community Food Drive is so important for the pantries here in the community,” Daugherty said in the video. “Last year we saw an increase in need to the point where we were not able to keep up with it. Traditionally, donations have kept up with the amount of food that we’ve given out. The last year alone, we had to purchase over 200,000 pounds of food to meet the need.”
