With the holiday season vastly approaching, the halls of KHS are filled with laughter, cheer, and holiday spirit. Unfortunately, not everyone has something to look forward to over the holidays.

The Powerpack program at Kings serves about 240 hungry children each week in the Kings community. Powerpack is a program that was started about 3 years ago to give hungry children food over the weekend.

Teachers were noticing that some students were having trouble focusing in class on Monday’s because they weren’t given food at home.

According to Amanda Fields, leader of Powerpack, the money for the food comes from a joint effort of Shared Harvest Foodbank and Joshua’s Place.

“I feel it is an important program because it is serving a direct need right in our backyards” said Fields.

Fields also stated that they usually have around 15 teen volunteers each week. Each volunteer is rewarded an hour of community service each week they participate. Along with the teen volunteers there are 3 adult volunteers and many behind the scenes workers.

“Without each of these people, we couldn’t impact so many lives” said Fields.

Among those 15 teen volunteers is senior, Autumn Mathias. Mathias has been volunteering through Powerpack for 3 years now and estimates she has served over 30 hours over the years.

“I see the families that get the packs and they talk about how much they appreciate them to me and it makes me feel more appreciative of the necessities that I don’t have to worry about, like food” said Mathias.

According to Fields, they don’t do anything particularly different for the holidays, but they try to send an additional jar of peanut butter along with the basic pack, to last them over break.

“My favorite part is seeing God impact the volunteers. There are no cliques or statuses. They are there to help hungry kids.””