Students from more than 20 LEAP program classes have been collecting food this month to help Crossroads Urban Center assist low-income families.
The eighth annual food drive started Feb. 12 and ends today. All the classes in the program are competing against each other. LEAP peer advisers will buy breakfast or lunch for the winners and possibly doughnuts for classes who come in second and third.
Although the competition did not officially start until February, LEAP students have been gathering food since the “Trick or Can!” activity in October.
Students have collected a lot more food since then but have not weighed it yet, said Jessica Jones, a food drive committee member and a junior in human development and family studies.
Around Halloween, students collected more than 1,000 pounds of food in neighborhoods near the U and in Sandy and Bountiful.
Peer advisers also wanted to set up stands to collect cans of food from the customers at local grocery stores. The stores turned them down, but some students showed up at the stores without peer advisers and succeeded in collecting cans.
LEAP students collect money, too. One fund-raiser took place at the U basketball game against UNLV on Feb. 16.
“We got permission from the athletics department to stand outside Huntsman
Center as the game was going over,” Jones said.
She also said five or six LEAP advisers, several students and their friends helped collect more than $300 in change, which they will also donate to the Crossroads Urban Center.
Today, LEAP students will host their main activity, “Bowling for Cans,” in the Union’s Crimson Commons from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. They rented the entire bowling alley for students to bowl a free game in exchange for two cans of food. It will be the last day of the food drive for LEAP students this year.
“I hope we do just as well as last semester, and hopefully even better,” said Brent Schmidt, a sophomore Spanish major and a food drive committee member. He said LEAP has not set a specific quota to reach at the “big finale.”
Lennie MahlerStudents Jessica Jones and Brent Schmidt load donated canned food into the LEAP house on Thursday. Today LEAP will host “Bowling for Cans,” which will give students games of bowling in the Union in exchange for two cans of food. The event runs from 4 to 6 p.m.