Students helping students in need

By Ethan Smith / Leader Staff

If you want to know where Polson Middle School student Jessica Hoel's giving nature comes from, well, you could say it's in her blood.

Hoel, 11, started a program at PMS this year called Kids-4-Kids, in which five students take home a backpack filled with nutritional food each Friday, and not a single one of them knows Hoel and four of her friends are behind it.

And that's just fine with her.

"It's actually kind of exciting, because I'm helping kids in need," she said.

Hoel's friends — Jessica Bagnell, Ashley Shepardson, Sierra Fairchild, and Carissa Griffin — have all joined in to help make it a team effort. In addition to bringing in food from home, and helping gather donated food from around town, they have planned and hosted school bake sales to raise money, too.

"We had a meeting (about Kids-4-Kids), and I asked, 'Does anyone want to help?' and they all wanted to," Hoel said.

The way it works is that PMS teachers, who've been made aware of the program, submit names of potential students to counselor Rhonda Hinman. From there, Hinman evaluates the names and selects three to five students each week who take home a backpack full of nutritional food.

The idea is to help students who might not be getting as much food to eat over the weekend, when they can't rely on school lunches to get them through the day. Best of all, the program is handled discreetly, so students can be helped without singling them out in front of their peers.

After all, they're just another kid walking out the school doors Friday afternoon with a backpack on, just like a hundred others around them.

"We use foods that a dietician recommended as 'healthy' that they could eat over the weekend," Hoel said. "We try to give enough to last all weekend."

The girls hosted a bake sale at the school this week, and students lined up to buy tasty treats, many of them not knowing that the proceeds would be used to buy more nutritional food for their classmates.

Hoel got the idea from her grandmother, M.J. Vann, who implemented a similar program in Coeur d'Alene a few years ago. Hoel's mother, Elizabeth, also did something similar when she was growing up, and Hoel said it just made sense to continue the family tradition of giving to others who might need a little leg up.

"I went there (to Coeur d'Alene) and my grandmother was telling me about it, and I thought it was a pretty good idea, so we started it here," Hoel said. "When my mom did it, she used to use boxes to put the food in, but backpacks work well, too. The kids just take them home Friday and bring them back on Monday."

From Monday to Wednesday, Hoel works to fill the backpacks. It's not just stocking them, though. She has to get the food through donations, and with the help of several friends, the Kids-4-Kids program is off and running.

While bake sales and food from home has so far made up the bulk of the donations, Hoel and her friends will be setting out boxes around town, at local businesses, in hopes of getting more food. Hoel hopes to have boxes set up at Super 1, Polson Ready Mix, and the Flathead Lake Inn.

And who knows? With more donations, Kids-4-Kids can help more students in need, Hoel noted.

"We are doing five kids this year, and if we can exceed that, we'll do 10 kids next year," she said.

Regardless of how many she helps, Hoel and her friends leave each week knowing that they've made life a little easier for a few of their peers who might not have as much, and that's the best part of all, she said.

"My parents (Elizabeth and Andrew Hoel) just encouraged me to do what my grandma was doing," Hoel said.

The backpack program is a family tradition, now - a tradition based on giving to others.

"I inherited a lot of stuff from my mom, passed on by my grandma," Hoel said of her giving attitude.

Hoel has never met any of the students she and her friends have helped — their names are known only to Hinman and a few other school employees — but that doesn't diminish the girls' feelings of satisfaction.

"She (Hinman) told me that when one student got his backpack, he said it felt like he'd won a million dollars," Hoel said.

Editor's note: To make food or monetary donations, or to have a donation box put in your business to help Kids-4-Kids, contact counselor Rhonda Hinman at 883-6335, ext. 355, or school secretary Peggy Kayser at ext. 300.