An adult-sized effort from a child’s heart

LEXINGTON – Freddy Lopez likes to study math. His favorite thing to do is to ride his bicycle, and his favorite sport is soccer.  He speaks two languages, Spanish and English.  But what makes Freddy remarkable is the size of his heart.

Showing surprising organizational skills for a ten-year-old, the Sandoz Elementary fourth grader took the initiative to start a food drive to help unfortunate people during the holidays. 

In first and second grades, Freddy and his classmates held food drives, and he noticed they had stopped doing it for some reason. 

“People needed food because they didn’t have enough money to buy any,” Freddy explained. 

Just in time for Christmas, Freddy was able to help the Lexington Food Pantry with a substantial donation on Dec. 19th.  

So he asked his principal, Fred Evans, if it was okay to ask Sandoz students to bring in food to be donated to the Lexington Food Pantry. He also asked his close friends and classmates Kevin and Sergio if they would help him too.

The three set out making a flyer to hand to students, classroom by classroom, in three languages, to take home to their parents.  Next, an automated phone message was made in English, Spanish and Somali, and programmed to further remind them to donate. 

Freddy also got a lot of help from the school secretary, Silvia Macia, who helped him make color copies of his flyer, and helped him put the “Connect-Ed” phone message to work.

“When he first started talking to me about doing this,” Macia said, “he contacted Sarah Anderson from the food pantry to find out what all it entailed and what he had to do in order to donate food and everything.” 

With focus and determination Freddy figured out every part of the process of what was needed to organize and complete a successful food drive.

“I think it’s a really, really neat thing that he did,” Anderson said.  “I think it would be wonderful if other kids would want to get involved like that.” 

And many kids did. Response was incredible. Over the course of four days students brought in hundreds of pounds of non-perishable food items and dropped them off under the Christmas tree in the school foyer. 

Freddy, the son of Maria and Freddy Lopez of Lexington, said that making the food drive happen was fun, and that he got a good feeling from helping people. 

He also said that the yummiest food donated, in his opinion, was the macaroni and cheese.

“People are going to need help sometimes,” he said.  “When they need help, you can help them.”

Current Rating: 4 of 1 votes!

Rate File: Select Rating: * ** *** ****