The Legacy Scholars are a group of 17 middle school students who are passionate about helping their community. Through their out-of-school time program at The Legacy Center, these students meet three times a month to work on enrichment and empowerment projects with a focus on transforming their communities.

For the past nine months, these students have been using Read to Lead to build leadership and career skills, culminating in a community outreach service project. Using a lesson plan from Community in Crisis, the Legacy Scholars identified the needs of their community and put together a plan for action. They saw an opportunity to put together healthy snacks for those experiencing homelessness, along with poems of encouragement and support. The Legacy Scholars worked with a health expert to guide their snack choices and made homemade raisin oat bars.

On Monday, February 19, eight Legacy Scholars, plus their parents and six coaches, joined The Legacy Center at Maria Hernandez Park for Feed Somebody Mondays, an ongoing program sponsored by the nonprofit and handed out their healthy snacks.  

When asked why the Legacy Scholars picked this activity as their community service project Amaris, the servant leader for this outreach said, “a lot of people don’t have access to healthy food, and a lot of the cheapest food is junk, it’s not good for them, so we want to give them healthy snacks!”

The Legacy Scholars plan to continue this project once a month, during holidays when school isn’t in session throughout the year, offering seasonal, healthy snacks. This service project was directly inspired by their work with Read to Lead and structured around the lesson plan from Community in Crisis. We’re proud of these students and excited to celebrate their effort!

Sign up for Read to Lead to access the free lesson plans like the one used for this project.