Firth and Shelley students fill 267 Christmas food boxes for families in need

SHELLEY — The Kiwanis Club is feeding hundreds of families this Christmas with help from donations from the public.

The Kiwanis Club of Shelley raised enough money from their annual Good Fellows drive to put together food boxes for 267 needy families. With the help of Firth and Shelley high school’s Key Clubs and Natural Helpers, they filled all of the boxes Monday afternoon at Shelley High School.

“I feel humbled,” Firth High School Sophomore Macie Mecham said. “It’s a good opportunity for us to reach out and serve others.”

The food boxes contain ham, milk, cheese, oranges, eggs, salad mix/lettuce, peanut butter, spaghetti sauce, hamburger, potatoes, jam, frosting, green beans, cake mix, olives, fruit cocktail, ramen noodles, gravy mix, ranch dressing, jello, bread, rolls and noodles.

“Each family will get everything they need for a nice Christmas dinner and also some things to carry them over through this Christmas break, especially if they have kids,” Shelley Kiwanis Club President Elect Kayleigh Searle said.

This year the Kiwanis Club decided to add something extra to the boxes. Each box also has a Christmas card inside.

“The Firth Key Club made a card for every single box, which was awesome. But we also have 250-ish cards that community members have made. Just to let the people know that we care about them. We love them. We are thinking of them,” Searle said.

The families receiving boxes were submitted to the Kiwanis Club by church leaders and school principals. Those same leaders, with help from students, will deliver the boxes.

“It’s nice to help out. I like doing anything I can,” Shelley High School sophomore Peyton Pack said.

Searle said they raised enough money through the Good Fellows drive that Kiwanis was able to donate hams to the Heart 2 Hand Bingham County Food Pantry.

“If people made a donation through our Paypal, or our Venmo, or through monetary donations to The Bank of Commerce, or East Idaho Credit Union, or also to the Broulim’s dropbox. We used all of that money to purchase the food,” Searle said.

Firth High School Junior Luke Hansen said he feels like helping with the food boxes is a good thing for young people like him to be a part of.