Wisconsin Teen Volunteer Supports Local Community, One Meal At a Time

Meet Daily Point of Light Award honoree Wyatt Ehrhardt. Read his story, and nominate an outstanding volunteer or family as a Daily Point of Light.

Wyatt Ehrhardt is a senior on the varsity hockey team at Middleton High School and has been team captain since his junior year. Outside of his passion for sports, he is president of his school’s Key Club, a student-led service organization for high school students. Since becoming a member during his freshman year, Wyatt has led the club’s growth from 100 to 300 members and created hundreds of hours of new volunteer service opportunities.

Through his experience with Key Club, Wyatt has seen first-hand the impact volunteers can have. Together with his co-founder, Wyatt launched their student-led nonprofit, Middleton Meals Matter, an organization to address food insecurity in the local community, with a vision of creating a place where everyone has access to nutritious, wholesome meals.

Over the past seven months, Middleton Meals Matter has collected and donated over 26,000 pounds of food and raised nearly $20,000. Their goal is to instill volunteerism in the community, especially among Middleton’s youth, so they can all make meaningful change.

What inspires you to volunteer?

My grandpa was part of the local Kiwanis Club in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. He always had several pairs of eyeglasses in his basement. As kids, my siblings and I would wear them and make funny faces. As I grew older, I began to wonder about those glasses. Eventually, I learned they were all donated to people in South American countries needing prescription eyewear. This sparked something inside me.

I immediately realized the importance of getting involved. I began collecting eyeglasses too, and still collect them to this day. During my freshman year, I began volunteering at Key Club, a student-led service organization for high school students. During this time, I volunteered at a local elementary school watching the kids play as their parents learned English. Then, in my junior year, I decided to bring the Lions Club mission to Key Club.

It’s amazing to see how we’ve created several new service opportunities for people and witnessed this change firsthand. Knowing that your service is paying off and people are being helped is a rewarding feeling.

Tell us about your volunteer role with Middleton Meals Matter.

I’m the co-founder and co-CEO of Middleton Meals Matter. I always try to find new things that Middleton Meals Matter can do to contribute to the community. One of our biggest projects is our monthly food drives. We do holiday-themed events, to get donors and volunteers engaged. For example, during Halloween, we think of creative ideas for ‘trick or treating,’ but for food. A week before Halloween night, we went around in various neighborhoods and laid out brown paper bags with slips of paper on them requesting food items that maybe people are willing to donate to the community. On the night of Halloween, we drove throughout neighborhoods and it was like Christmas morning, seeing the presents on everyone’s porch. All these people had laid out their grocery bags full of food on all their porch doorsteps.

It was a historic night. That Halloween night set a record for our biggest food drive. We raised 4,400 pounds of food.

What inspired you to get started with this initiative?

Food insecurity in our local community was discussed during a Kiwanis International meeting. I learned that Middleton has been facing significant food insecurity for the past 30 years. As a result, the Middleton Meals co-founder and I sat down with the former Mayor of Middleton and the former president of Kiwanis International to brainstorm further ways to impact our community.

At first, our goal was to solve problems on a global scale. However, they helped us realize that the problem we needed to focus on was in Middleton. This was when I discovered the best way to see the change happening firsthand and make an impact yourself. That sparked the creation of Middleton Meals Matters, which has since taken off.

What are your long-term plans or goals for the organization?

Of course, Middleton Meals Matter will continue to thrive long after I graduate. However, we have also been working on creating a new nonprofit called Meals Matter International. This organization is similar to Middleton Meals Matter but more overarching.

We want to start Meals Matter in different schools. We would share a blueprint for contacting local food drives and connecting with local grocery stores to start food drives in their local areas. From there, they could donate food to their local food pantries, and we will continue to expand this outreach.

Ultimately, we want Meals Matter to spread across the state and the country. As it expands, we hope our reach will continue to broaden as our name emerges. Every year we try to set new records that we want to break.

What’s been the most rewarding part of your work?

The most rewarding part is all the different food drives we host and the happy memories I get to keep from them. Customers come up, we’ll hand them the receipts, they shop for items and as they are putting items in their baskets, they kind of just have smiles on their faces. They’re looking at us, or sometimes they even compliment us on our work by saying ‘This is amazing! Thank you so much.’ And that’s just great because knowing they’re happy and donating to the community is a fulfilling feeling. Knowing that the community members are willing to get involved and that they’ll gladly do it motivates us to keep going and striving for this change.

What have you learned through your experiences as a volunteer?

I have learned a lot. As a volunteer, observing and practicing patience is fundamental. Sometimes people won’t donate. Of course, you want successful food drives, but ultimately it takes patience. You may not always have the most successful food drive, but there’s always the next one. There’s always a possibility for a great outcome.

However, the main focus is not always the physical success attained but the feeling and experience. Small actions create significant change. At first, collecting food seemed simple, but I quickly realized how small contributions can change lives. Seeing families benefit from our donations, no matter how small, has reinforced my belief in the importance of collective efforts.

Tell us about future partnerships, programs or events that you are excited about.

As mentioned, we typically hold monthly food drives at a local grocery store. Nowadays, we spend one day conducting double food drives at two locations simultaneously. Our goal for the future is to hold three food drives simultaneously within the next month or so.

For future partnerships, we’re looking to partner with other nonprofits. Expanding our reach always helps. We even organize fundraisers with other nonprofits to raise money for our cause. While our primary focus is food insecurity, we would love to help the community any other way we can.

Any advice for people who want to start volunteering?

I suggest going for it. You don’t realize how rewarding and great volunteering can be until you start. We have fun with our friends at these food drives, passing out slips and collecting food donations. Ultimately, our friends always ask when the next food drive is and how they can get involved with our organization. My advice is to just volunteer. I promise you won’t regret it.

What do you want people to learn from your story?

Small actions and small steps can create a huge impact. And many people don’t realize the extent of food insecurity in our community. Thankfully, Middleton Meals Matter has begun educating people and spreading awareness to encourage community members to take action. Anyone can do this; it’s not something you need special qualifications to do. And most importantly, you don’t need to have money. You can start at any time. Just reach out and take that leap of faith, and I promise everything will work out.

Do you want to make a difference in your community like Wyatt? Find local volunteer opportunities.