We placed the letters HUNGER on a wall in the back entrance of the pharmacy school and divided the letters into our 4 class colors.  The goal was to create a competition between classes as to who could bring the most pounds of food to cover up their class colored portion of the word for Hunger week and the Beat Bama Food Drive.  We also had bins set up for monetary donations for those who wanted to give but didn't have the opportunity to run by the store.  We gave a presentation to the school 2 weeks before in order to introduce and explain the event and we sent regular email updates throughout the week, with pictures showing which class had more food and how much HUNGER we had left to obscure.

While we've had canned food drives in the past, the idea here was to create a visual display that would allow the school to watch as local hunger was conquered by their personal contributions.  This display gave students the chance to see how their donations, however small, made a difference in a collaborative effort to make HUNGER disappear.

I was really excited about this event, having seen something similar done with Campbell's soup in Guelph this past February.  Our subcommittee brainstormed for 2 months on how to make this work, and we were all anxious to see if the student body would catch our enthusiasm and participate in the spirit of competition.  Day 1 saw less than a dozen items donated, and we realized how long we had to go. 

As the week progressed, the competition picked up, but even though we'd gotten a decent amount of food donated, we were worried on Thursday that we wouldn't reach our goal by the end of Hunger Week on Friday afternoon.

On the last day, I walked into the school to see this:

It turned out that a couple classes had been collecting their food in secret to throw off their competition.  The small plastic bins we had been using all week were woefully unequipped to hold all the food.

As demanding as the course load for our student body is, we were concerned that taking part in this competition wouldn't be at the top of everyone's to-do lists.  One student, who had spent every day that week staying late to count money and weigh food and stack cans, told me that her grades were definitely going to take a hit.  But, it was just one score on one test and knowing that she helped a family have food on their plates at dinner was absolutely worth it.

Between the Auburn and Mobile Harrison School of Pharmacy campuses, the students, faculty and staff raised 1,983 total lbs. - just under a ton of food.

The pictures from the week's totals in Mobile and Auburn, respectively: