09-04-2025
Johnstown Christian students continue to Feed the Need
Johnstown Christian School students have been making an impact locally and around the world with their annual meal-packing event, and they are having fun doing it, too.
For the past six years, pre-kindergartners through 12th-graders have packed about 60,000 meal boxes through the school's Feed the Need project.
Tables were set up side-by-side in the gymnasium while production lines of students, staff and volunteers filled meal boxes with bags of rice, lentils, dried vegetables and vitamin mix.
This year, 10,000 meals were sent to Bangladesh. Head of School Celeste Sprankle told our Joshua Byers that the location was chosen before packing began. She said picking the South Asian country was timely because residents there were impacted by tremors of a 7.7 magnitude earthquake.
Throughout the meal-packing event, students, volunteers and staff cranked up the music and often chanted 'Fill the box' and 'Feed the Need' as they danced and worked.
Freshman Levi Diguardi said, 'It's cool to just know that we have such an impact.'
And classmate Oriana Yoder said it's fulfilling to take part in 'something that matters.'
The Champion Group, with which the school has worked since the beginning of the Feed the Need project, handles the shipping logistics. Its mission is to empower Christian schools and ministries to accomplish greater impact through increased funding and organizational effectiveness.
In 2020, the first-ever Feed the Need project sent 8,500 meal boxes to Haiti, and 1,500 stayed in the Johnstown area.
Dan Yoder, a volunteer and grandfather of Oriana Yoder, commended the school for its introduction of volunteerism and community service to the students, especially starting at a young age.
He said, 'I think it's a wonderful thing, really.'
And we do, too.
