JACE KILBOURNE

Jace Kilbourne, 13, a seventh-grader at Chaparral Middle School, organized a “Helping Hand” food drive at his school that yielded more than 52 boxes of canned goods and non-perishable food to feed 75 children at an orphanage in Mexico. Jace’s project was born as a result of seeing a program on the school news channel about hungry children in that county. It made him feel sad that children in Mexico were eating food from garbage cans to survive. After talking to his mother and school principal, he came up with the idea for a food drive. Jace made posters and food collection boxes and placed them throughout the school. He also enlisted help from fellow students to count and pack the donations for their trip to Casa De Libertad Bethel in Juarez, Mexico. Jace recently conducted a second drive for the orphanage. It involved four schools and they collected an addition al 60 boxes of canned goods and laundry products. Jace learned that anyone can make a difference in the world if they try.