The canned food drive is an annual event at the Walker School during which students in grades 6 through 12 bring in canned foods to donate to the Salvation Army. The Walker School is the main contributor to the salvation army and last year donated almost 6,000 cans. Along with helping families in need during the holiday season, our community collects cans as a grade-wide competition, and every Upper School grade that collects at least 1100 cans gets to wear sweatpants during midterm exams. To meet that goal, the juniors and seniors need to collect 138 cans per advisory, which would cost less than $6 dollars per person. The sophomores and freshmen will have to collect 157 cans per advisory which would cost about $7 dollars per person.

   All canned and boxed foods that are not past their expiration date are acceptable except for ramen noodles and anything packaged in glass containers. SSO Faculty Sponsor Malanda Murchison said, “It’s important to help people in need. Since 1 in 5 people in Georgia struggle with hunger and many of those people are children or senior citizens, it’s just the right thing to do.” Emmalissa Perkison, an SSO officer, said “Everybody in the US is aware of things like kids starving in Africa, but I don’t think a lot of people, especially upper/upper middle class people, realize that there are also people suffering in their backyards. The canned food drive raises awareness of this fact while helping people in those situations in the process.” The canned food drive is an easy and great way to help people in need right here in Marietta. To people who have not brought in cans, Emmett Allen, the SSO Treasurer, says, “you should bring in cans and doing so isn’t as much of a hassle as you might think. You don’t even have to buy the cans yourself- next time you have advisory you could have everyone give money to one person who can do it for you.”