Over the past 3 years at Lakeside, grade 3 students have been organising food and toy drives with ‘Food from the Heart’, a non-profit charity. Their mission is to reach out to the less fortunate people in Singapore and alleviate hunger through a food distribution programme.

Food from the Heart offers a variety of programmes for volunteers to take part in. This year, the grade 3 teachers chose the ‘School Goodie Bag’ programme. This programme works with schools to identify their most needy students and then provides monthly supplies to help their families make ends meet.

The idea of a food drive connected well with our 'Sharing the Planet' unit of inquiry (equality and access to opportunities), and it was a great opportunity for us to do something for our local Singapore community. It was a good learning experience for us to recognise that not everyone in Singapore is in a position to provide for themselves.

Our grade 3 students were first introduced to ‘Food from the Heart’ in February and began planning their food drive over the next two months. They created emails, posters and presentations, and visited the classes of all the primary grades to get the word out! From 14 to 28 May, students collected and counted many donation items. Finally on 5 June, we handed a huge collection of food items to ‘Food from the Heart’.

It was so wonderful to see grade 3 and primary school taking action to help others in the Singapore community!