Andrew Martins, Managing Editor
For the last 29 years, students at Toll Gate Elementary School in Pennington have spent most of their November gathering ingredients, raising money and preparing Thanksgiving meals to help hundreds of people at the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen (TASK) enjoy the holiday.
Earlier this month, Toll Gate staff and officials from TASK were on hand to kick off the school’s 30th effort, celebrating three decades of school-wide community service.
“I think that there’s an opportunity to have fun doing something that’s clearly benefitting other people that are lacking,” Program Co-chair Dawn Berman said.
Since the program began in 1987, students at Toll Gate Elementary School have worked with local organizations like the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and local businesses to prepare and deliver approximately 750 meals to those in need.
Berman said that type of undertaking requires a lot of planning by the school’s PTO, TASK and school officials.
“It really is well organized. We know how many people we need to cover all these different tasks that need to happen,” Berman said. “It really starts early October when we start meeting and making sure that we have the people in place to get all the little jobs done.”
Though this year’s effort was kicked off on Nov. 8 at a “Gator Gathering” at the school, a targeted food drive split among the school’s grade levels began in earnest on Nov. 1.
Until Nov. 15, students in kindergarten will work to collect 64 ounce bottles of shelf-stable juice, first graders will collect boxes of Stove Top stuffing, second graders will collect cans of green beans, third graders will collect cans of sweet potatoes and evaporated milk, fourth graders will collect 4 to 5 pound bags of sugar and fifth graders will gather cans of turkey gravy.
On Nov. 17, the fifth-graders will then begin loading all non-perishable items into a truck for delivery to the soup kitchen, as well as assemble the 275 pie boxes that will be baked on Nov. 20 and 21.
At the Toll Gate cafeteria on Nov. 21, roughly 90 turkeys donated by area real estate agencies and local residents will be carved in a nearly two-hour period during the annual “Carve-a-thon” before the third grade class delivers everything to the soup kitchen on the following day.
Along with Toll Gate Elementary’s efforts, other local organizations pitch in to the effort. All three preschools in town make a cranberry relish, Timberlane Middle School students collect donations for sandwiches and bagged lunches, the local Boy Scouts collect and bag candy to be placed in those lunches and the local Girl Scouts make corn bread.
Berman estimates that more than 22,000 meals have been provided by the effort since its inception.
One of the key components of the entire operation, Berman said, was trying to help students understand the importance of charity and compassion. This year at the kick off, some former Toll Gate students who are now at Hopewell Valley Central High School took some time to share their stories and why they kept helping after the program.
“One of the kids, I thought, made a really lovely point when he said ‘you know the feeling when you give someone a gift and you really enjoy it? Try to make as many of those opportunities for people as you can…that’s a good feeling to chase,’” Berman said. “We all kind of fall down. We all at some point need a hand and it’s always better when somebody’s there to notice…and these are just people that need a hand.”
