Savannah Jeffrey and her mom, Esther Jeffrey, collect donations on April 23 at a drive-by food drive at East Catholic High School in Manchester. Principal Ryan Hinton, in the school mascot eagle costume, waves to donors. Photos courtesy of East Catholic High School.

By Shelley Wolf

MANCHESTER – Students and parents at East Catholic High School in Manchester collected eight truckloads of food and more than $1,085 in monetary donations at a drive-by food drive on April 23 in an act of Catholic kindness to benefit their needy neighbors.

Wearing masks and keeping their distance, students and parents worked in the circular driveway in front of the school, collecting grocery bags from car windows and trunks. Principal Ryan Hinton, wearing the school mascot eagle costume with an added mask, cheered them on and waved to the donors.

“It turned out to be a wonderful event,” said Esther Jeffrey, president of the East Catholic Parents’ Association, which sponsored the food drive. “People were driving up handing us $100 bills and giving us gift cards to Stop & Shop. It was really beautiful. You have one kind idea, and it sparks a real response.”

Donors also dropped off bags containing cereal, pasta sauces, canned tuna, mac and cheese and other non-perishables, all destined for the Manchester Area Conference of Churches (MACC) Charities Community Pantry, located on Main Street in Manchester.

Jeffrey credits her daughter Savannah, a junior at East Catholic High School, for coming up with the act of kindness. “I helped my daughter pull it together, but she was the one who came up with the idea,” Jeffrey said. “And she took responsibility for contacting MACC to find out what they were in need of.”

Savannah, 16, said she was getting restless, watching her mom, a hospice nurse, helping others while she sat at home on the sidelines of the pandemic doing her school work. Savannah also watched the news and saw the endless line of cars as laid off workers lined up for free food donations from Foodshare, a regional food bank, at Rentschler Field in East Hartford.

“I was trying to think of something to give back to the community,” Savannah said. “There are so many struggling people right now, people who don’t have jobs. As a Catholic person, it’s important to give back, to make sure of the common good of everyone, especially for meeting their basic needs.”

Savannah said she learned those values at home and at Catholic school. “At school we do service projects, but that got cut short this year due to the coronavirus,” she said. “Because we live close to the MACC Community Pantry, I thought about doing a food drive. East Catholic High School has this roundabout in front, and I thought it would be a good idea to do it there. People could just drive up and drop things off.”

Many others at the school worked together to publicize the drive-by food drive. The elder Jeffrey said, “The secretary sent an eblast to parents, Savannah posted it on social media, it got posted on the East Catholic social media, and we also emailed the Journal Inquirer.”

Since so many children are home from school during the pandemic, the MACC Charities Community Pantry specifically requested child favorites, like cereal and spaghetti. So the East Catholic team put out a list of these and other requested food items as part of their publicity.

The Manchester Area Conference of Churches Charities builds partnerships to break the cycle of poverty in the local community. During the pandemic, its Community Kitchen is remaining open to hand out bagged lunches. The Emergency Food Pantry is handing out bagged groceries by appointment. For appointments call 860-647-8003, ext. 31.

Food and other donations are being gratefully received at the MACC Charities Community Pantry, 460 Main St., Manchester, on Monday through Thursday, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and on Friday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. However, the Community Threads Thrift Shoppe will remain closed until further notice. For more information on MACC Charities, visit macc-ct.org.

The school is hoping to plan another drive-by food drive later this spring as the weather improves. For more information on East Catholic High School, visit echs.com or facebook.com/EastCatholicHighSchool.