Friday I stopped by the Unadilla Valley school library to visit students as they packaged their collected food stuffs for local families. The food and toy drive is an annual event run by the school called Project Santa, which was started in 1996, 12 years ago.

I couldn’t help but be entertained by the idea that the seniors helping in the project were kindergartners when it first began, a credit to the heritage of the program which has been propelled from class to class by the teachers and staff.

Teacher Melissa Keenberg and a handful of eighth grade students from the Honor Society were in the library surrounded by collected cans and boxed food that littered the floor and large conference table.

Keenberg explained that she and the other teachers took a general inventory of the items collected by the high, middle and elementary schools and created a list of what each box should contain, including portions of vegetables, a main course, pasta and even dessert.

“Of course they aren’t perfect, more like guidelines for preparing each box. We wanted to make sure each family gets a a good and balanced variety of food,” she said.

So the students did their best putting together over a dozen gift food boxes wrapped in Christmas paper.