Adviser of the Birdfeeder, Sophia Ross, said students in her community service class help run and manage the in-school food shelf.

“The Birdfeeder is part of my community service class and everybody in the class takes part in the Birdfeeder, like helping out with the food drives or telling people about who we are and what we do and what our needs are, but there are a group of student managers who run the website, help pack backpacks and help us get connected with outside organizations to collect donations so that we can keep the Birdfeeder up and running,” Ross said.

Recently installed student manager, senior Althea Tyler said she is excited about helping the families in her community.

“I am looking forward to helping families in need and making sure they’re getting fed through the winter so they can have security with food and don’t have to worry about that kind of thing,” Tyler said.

According to Ross, the Birdfeeder is more easily accessible to students than STEP because it is located in the school.

“STEP, one of their goals was to get more teens to use the food shelf, but what was difficult for teens, especially from our high school was to go over to STEP to get something and then be able to carry all of that food home or wherever,” Ross said. “So having the Birdfeeder right in our school has helped many families in our district.”

Ross said students can request to take meals packed by the Birdfeeder home in backpacks.

“We pack meals for students during the week and on the weekend. We put them in backpacks for easy transportation, and we just ask that when they’re done using the food they bring them back to the counseling office, so we can keep reusing those backpacks. Students can pick up a request form in the student counseling office,” Ross said.

Ross said the Birdfeeder is unique due to it being completely run by the students and fully funded by the community.

“We get all of our donations from the community, whether that means in money form or food form and it’s totally student operated. I just think that it’s really cool that it’s so accessible to students and if there’s an emergency and they need the food right now, we can do that for them,” Ross said.

According to Tyler, the community service class communicates frequently and works as a team to keep the shelf running smoothly.

“(The community service class) texts a lot, so when we need to get food we can, so it’s definitely a lot of communication and if we’re not talking to each other, there are going to be a lot of miscommunications, so it’s totally teamwork,” Tyler said.

Tyler said she aspires to increase recognition of the Birdfeeder so that more families could be helped.

“I hope to change the amount of people that know about the Birdfeeder and spread more awareness, because even with my family, they didn’t know about it, but anybody who does need help food-wise should be able to find it easily and know about it,” Tyler said.