Satisfaction in helping others
St. Matthew School students Bo Bateman and Brycen Scoggins drop off the school’s donations at the St. Matthew Parish Food Pantry Nov. 13. CHARLOTTE — You’d think for a third-grader, the prospect of designing how your elementary school principal will have to shave his beard at the end of “No Shave November” would be the best motivation to collect and donate thousands of canned and non-perishable goods to a food drive.
But for Brycen Scoggins, a student at St. Matthew School, it’s his desire to help those less fortunate than himself.
For the past four years, since he was a kindergartener, Brycen has worked hard to donate thousands of cans – even asking that any monetary gifts he receives on his birthday and Christmas be used to buy food for his school’s “No Shave November” annual fall food drive.
“I decided to it would be better to help the poor instead of getting stuff for myself. To give it to people who need it more than I do,” he explained.
Every November up until Thanksgiving break, Brycen and his school community collect canned goods and other non-perishable food for the St. Matthew Parish food pantry. The school goal is 300 cans or items each day. If the school meets that daily goal during “No Shave November,” then Principal Kevin O’Herron will continue growing a beard.
Every school day during “No Shave November,” each class counts their donations and places a sheet with the stats written on it outside their door in the hallway. Members of the student council come around with carts in the afternoon to pick up the donations, then wheel them down the hill from the school to the parish’s food pantry located underneath the daily Mass chapel.
But Brycen has to have a special cart for all of his daily food donations and a separate space to store it.
“We have to store it here (in the stairwell) because it won’t fit (in the hallway outside the classroom). At the last day, I bring in like 500 cans that day,” he said, smiling.
O’Herron is proud of the example Brycen is setting for his classmates.
“Brycen must be doing something to encourage others, because three of the four third grades are up there in their daily collection numbers in third, fourth and fifth place right now,” he said.
He is also amazed at how the local community is responding to Brycen’s efforts, sharing that when Brycen goes shopping with his mother, Shannon, other shoppers have noticed and asked what he is doing. “Because of the story he has shared with those shoppers (about the food drive), he now has met others who also buy food for him,” O’Herron explained.
“Brycen has always been one to ‘help the underdog’,” Shannon said. “If he saw someone that needed something he found a way to get it to them. No mother could be as proud of a son as I am of Brycen. He truly amazes me every day.”
Principal Kevin O’Herron assists the students in transporting the donated food from the school to the food pantry Nov. 13. (SueAnn Howell | Catholic News Herald)O’ Herron is thankful that there is a parish food pantry to help store everything. “What I love about it is that not only are we helping with our parish, but they are diversified and they are giving to families for Thanksgiving, they help the Missionaries of the Poor and Loaves and Fishes, too,” he added.
Many of the items the students collect during November go in the Thanksgiving baskets the parish assembles for needy families each year that are distributed at the Diocese of Charlotte Pastoral Center.
“We have been averaging about 1,000 cans a day this year,” O’Herron noted. “The last day of collecting we usually bring in 3,000. I’m sure we’ll be in the 15,000-can range when the service project is done.”
He said any money collected on the last day of the food drive go towards the school’s Christmas project.
“On the last day of our collection, we collect money for families that we adopt for Christmas. It really helps. Our third-, fourth- and fifth-grade students also go shop for the families,” O’Herron explained. “It’s a credit to our families. We are building habits of giving to others. Kudos to our families.”
How does Brycen feel about doing his part?
“It makes me feel really good. It feels like satisfaction that I am helping people,” he said.
— SueAnn Howell, senior reporter