MOSES LAKE — The families of 30 Columbia Middle School students will have a turkey and all the trimmings for Thanksgiving dinner, with the help of CMS students.

The school’s Builders Club, ASB leadership and National Honor Society chapter held a food drive with the goal of helping 30 families. They met Monday afternoon in the school library to check out the results.

“These boxes are for families that can’t afford or who are in need of stuff like food for Thanksgiving dinner,” said ASB President Yaretzi Madrigal.

The Builders Club is the junior high club sponsored by Kiwanis, and its members are given a choice of service projects. 

“Builders Club is a club where people, basically, help out the school community and other people,” said club member Caliegh Byers.

Club member Knox Anderson said it was a good way to learn about service projects.

“I wanted to help the community,” she said. 

The Thanksgiving basket drive was the result of a conversation between the ASB leadership and school counselor Chris Mason.

“This is a project we’ve done in the past,” Mason said. “It was something that I mentioned to our ASB officers, and they said yeah, they wanted to do it.”

Mason sent the word out to parents, and within a very short time had nominations for 30 families. The sponsoring clubs then started a food drive, with a list of what would be needed for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, from turkey and rolls to the makings for green bean casserole. The clubs received donations of onions and potatoes from the Taton Corporation, Mason said. The boxes were donated by the local International Paper facility. 

Mason said the goal was not only to feed families.

“Leadership is about service,” he said. “That’s what you want them to know — ‘What have you done for others today?’ We want to instill that in them, that leadership is about what you’re doing for somebody else. Leaders are leaders especially when no one is looking.”

The food drive is only one of the projects for the Builders Club, which helped with a community cleanup and some of whose members have volunteered to ring the bell for the Salvation Army donation drive in early December. 

The club also has a “Pennies for Pets” fundraiser, Byers said.

“Every advisory (class) had this little tin and people would put money in there for the animal shelter,” she said.

They raised a little more than $600 last school year, she said, and plan to run that project again this year. 

Columbia Middle School is planning a food drive for the Moses Lake Food Bank from Nov. 27 to Dec. 15, Mason said. 

“Historically, we have given anywhere between 4,000 and 12,000 pounds to the food bank, and a serious cash donation too,” he said. 

Cheryl Schweizer may be reached at [email protected].