Students volunteers at Begging for Cans event (Courtesy/Ms. Bening)

Ghouls and goblins were not the only things visiting people’s doorsteps on Halloween night. Sporting their best costumes, thirty upper school students visited local homes, asking for canned food as part of the our annual “Begging for Cans” Service Board event. Dating back to 1991, Academy collaborates with the local neighborhood north of campus every Halloween with the school notifiying households a week in advance. For the last fifteen years, upper school history teacher Mr. Morford and his wife continued this original effort, and this year Mr. Bolognese also pitched in to guide students as counted their collections. The Morfords cleaned out their garage and set up tables, lit a bonfire in their backywar and offered pizza and snacks to make this night a great social gathering for the students. 

Ms. Bening said,“ We decided to create it because we wanted people to contribute their time in a social and fun way and make sure that those kids for whom be picking out of their own pantry might be a little problematic financially or for whatever reason could contribute their time to get some donations rather than having to take them out of their pocket. We wanted to be good community servants and create a good atmosphere with our neighborhoods.”

Shopping carts were the best way to get around and allowed for storing the most amount of the begaars’ treasures. After an evening of asking for treats, students hauled their goods to campus. From there, in the next few days, our 6th graders would be sorting the items into like categories.

Thank you to everyone who spent their evening helping out the community.