Souper stars

Sorting pears into pouches and handing out food to families in need is how the students of the Pine Shores Presbyterian Church youth group spent the first few days of spring break last week.

A session of packing food and presenting a check for $19,256 to All Faiths Food Bank were part of the final steps in the Souper Bowl of Caring project the youth group participated in this year. The group’s efforts are part of the nationwide program Souper Bowl of Caring that involves more than 6,200 groups.

Every year the high school and middle school students collect canned goods and money during the week leading up to the Super Bowl. Among the group members who helped this year is Riverview High School sophomore MacKenzie Vance and Pine View School for the Gifted seventh-grader Forrest St. Pierre.

“It was a team effort,” Vance said. “After we sort the food, All Faiths takes it and they put it into their distributors around town and give it to the homeless people.

This year the nationwide proram collected $7,706,135 in cash and food to be donated to charities. Pine Shores contributed 2,200 cans of food and more than $19,000 to that total.

“We couldn’t have done it without any of the people at the church. They donated all the food and all the cans and helped us reach our goal.” -Forrest St. Pierre, Pine View School for the Gifted seventh-grader

Those contributions earned the youth group the ranking of first in the state of Florida for Souper Bowl of Caring among all participating groups and first in the country for all churches that participated.

“We’re a small church,” Vance said. “There are some churches that have 2,000-plus members and we only have about 500. It’s really surprising how we were able to get that much food and money to become No. 1 in the state.”

Since 2006 the youth group has contributed 16,000 cans of food and donated more than $100,000 to All Faiths Food Bank. Director of Donor Relations Aundria Castleberry was on-hand to help receive the check from the group.

“I think these children are excellent role models and will become great leaders some day because they are consistent with theircontributions,”Castleberry said. “Every time I speak I talk about Pine Shores to other youth organizations. I use them as a role model for what to do.”