Norwich

Norwich Free Academy Students Show ‘Can-Do Attitude' With Large Donation

A group of four high school seniors donated more than $1,000 worth of cans to the school's food drive.

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Norwich Free Academy's food pantry received a large donation this week thanks to four friends on a mission.

Aiden Campbell, Christian Bray, Sean Grice and Joseph Davis, all seniors at NFA, pooled together their own money from working part-time jobs and bought more than 1,000 cans to support their school's food drive.

“We just wanted to help people," Bray said.

The friends say that Campbell was the ringleader for the project. Campbell said he was in class when his teacher made an announcement about the school's food drive.

“I mentioned something kind of half-heartedly and then it kind of grew," Campbell said. “It just kind of felt right, felt important to do.”

Campbell used all of his tip money from his job at a local restaurant and half of his most recent paycheck. With his friends chipping in, too, they spent $1,150 on 1,000 canned goods and hundreds of boxes of pasta.

"Just wanted to give back to the community," Grice said.

Earlier this week, the students dropped the food off at school. Some of the donations will be given to the local soup kitchen, but most of the food will go to the Norwich Free Academy food pantry.

The food pantry feeds about 50 to 70 students a week, sending them home with food on the weekends.

“The inflation has increased the need definitely. We get more students coming forward themselves. Not their families calling, but them themselves saying it would help so much if they could bring some food home," said Shirley Kutia, who runs the food pantry.

Kutia said she has never seen a student donation of this size.

"Awesome. I mean for these young adults, boys in high school, to go out on their own and do something like this? Wonderful," Kutia said.

The friends said it meant even more to them that they are able to help their fellow students.

“We can help people who we see every day. Because normally it is like we are going to help people we have never seen before," Bray said. "They are here and they actually need it right now and we can give that to them.”

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