MGSF Annual Grocery Cart Race

The Youth Leadership Highlands of the Mason G. Smoak Foundation’s annual Grocery Cart Race was a fantastic experience. We were given instructions to go to local businesses around our county and tell them about our program and what we do and also ask them for donations. These donations went to gathering food for members of our community through the Heartland Food Bank. Going to all of these different businesses made our YLH class go out of our comfort zones and talk to adults, many that we did not know, and ask them to give away their hard earned money to help others, surprisingly it worked! We then had to meet up and make our team posters and write personal thank you cards. The next step was to wake up (way too early) and get to the grocery store before 5:45 a.m. to meet. We went inside half asleep and had to search around the whole store throwing certain food items into our cart, while focusing on our time. Each team went up against a team from the community. At the end of the morning we had raised over three-thousand dollars in food and loaded it all up into the Heartland Food Bank’s truck. We were able to expand our confidence by talking to strangers, and raise money to help people in our community at the same time. We all had an amazing time and I know that I would surely do it again.