Arlington Heights, IL – A full year of serving the community and giving back came to an epic conclusion last Friday at Olive-Mart Stitt Elementary in District 25 as the OMS students literally carried out an OMS tradition.

Olive’s 5^th Grade Service Learning Club was at it again, with their Fill the Nest effort where they spent the month of May collecting and organizing bags of food to benefit and be donated to the Wheeling Township Pantry. The students delivered the 295 bags of food using a human chain that connected the Olive commons to the truck outside that would deliver the food to the pantry.

“Hunger doesn’t take a summer break,” Olive parent and Service Learning Club co-chair Rachael Hooker said.

Hooker and fellow Olive parent Christine Gilbert, planned a service project for each month throughout the school year to highlight the pillars of the Character Counts Program.

Throughout the year, Olive students helped to clothe the homeless, reach out and connect with veterans, provided shoes to the impoverished, and raised funds to deliver fresh water to those in the world who do not have such access.

“We want to teach our students to find out what the community need is and respond accordingly,” Hooker said. “November is typically a peak time for food donations, but by the time the summer comes around, the food pantries are in need again,” Hooker said. “That’s why the Fill the Nest effort made sense for May.”

Below are highlights of the Character Counts program executed earlier in the year.

OMS Honors their first responders

Warm the Nest effort at Olive