Steve Frey
Contributing writer
Last Wednesday was the food collection day for the “Radford Gives Back” program through Radford University, and did they ever give back.
Some of the Radford University students and staff that helped out, along with community members, encircle a giant RU filled with bags of food for the Radford Bobcats Backpack Program. RU students collected over 15,000 food items as part of the annual Radford Gives Back food drive.
The program was a tremendous success as students and staff from the university donated over 15,000 food items to the Bobcat Backpack Program.
That family support organization sends home food with 175 Radford City Public School students in need every weekend. The program also provides food for families in need over the summer.
Typical of the Radford students participating was Emily Warro, a junior at RU from Colonial Heights, Virginia. She belongs to Alpha Phi Omega, a national co-ed fraternity dedicated to helping others in the community, and their organization wanted to “give back” to Radford by donating several cans of food.
Another student helping out was Sydni Pennington, also a junior and from Radford City.
She was participating as a member of the RU Swim Club and is the secretary for that organization. She was donating a box filled with cans of soup to help “give back.”
Radford Mayor David Horton thanked the students for their generosity and facilitated the collection celebration at Radford University where the multi-use room in the recreation center had tables filled with food items to be packed.
Dr. Marisela Rosas Hemphill, the wife of Radford University President Brian O. Hemphill, thanked the students, faculty and staff of Radford University for their generosity toward the “Radford Gives Back” initiative.
She also thanked Jenny Riffe, Jane Fisher and Daniela Brunner who coordinate the Bobcat Backpack Program.
In emphasizing the importance of community service, Hemphill said that “by focusing on the needs of others, we are creating new opportunities for them, for ourselves, and for society.”
Brunner, who is a teacher at Belle Heth (Belle Heth children brought in hundreds of pounds of food, too), also addressed the RU students.
She asked them to raise their hands if they participated in helping out with the program previously and said about “45-50 students show up every Thursday night” to help with the packing for the weekend.
She said that as a teacher, she sends home food for students in her own class, and she described how much it meant to the program, the teachers, the families and especially the children to have the help of the Radford University students with this program.
After the speakers, the Radford University students moved from table to table filling bags with food items. In the end, they covered the RU sign in the middle of the room with hundreds of bags of food. The students then loaded all of the food on a truck to go to the Presbyterian Church in Radford for unloading.
At the church, eager volunteers unloaded the truck and carried the food to the back of the stage and pantry areas for storage. The volunteers included community members, RCPS students and staff, college students and even members of the Radford Bobcat Marching Band.
Radford Superintendent of Schools Rob Graham summed up the day and program with a quote from a former school administrator during his address at the RU collection celebration: “A hundred years from now, it will not matter what my bank account was, the kind of car I drove, or the house I lived in, but the world will be different because I was important in the life of a child.”
“Thank you, Radford University and the Bobcat Backpack Program for being important in the lives of our children and community members,” he said.