Helping Hunger held its first club meeting on Monday, Aug. 25. The club, newly founded this year by junior Martin Kuta, is also led by juniors Lydia Ripoli, Mia Ly and Marion Baroza.
Helping Hunger is a service club with the goal of fighting food insecurity locally as well as globally by volunteering at food pantries such as Loaves and Fishes and Feed My Starving Children.
“I’m Chinese, and my grandma was born in Taiwan. She was very food insufficient,” said founder and president Martin Kuta. “I think [her experience] played a big role in me starting this club, because I can’t imagine how hurtful it must be for people around the world – or even in the U.S. – to suffer food insecurity.”
Kuta hopes to not only increase participation in Helping Hunger by the end of the school year but also to potentially organize field trips to food pantries in Chicago.
“Right now, we’re trying to determine the safest place [in Chicago] for all of the students, because that’s our main concern,” Kuta said.
Kuta is joined in his efforts by vice president Lydia Ripoli, who he reached out to last school year offering a board position.
“I thought [Helping Hunger] was a beautiful motivation to help the community,” said Ripoli. “I hope to create a tight-knit community who wants to reach out and help other people through this club or [even] by themselves.”
Helping Hunger is currently coordinating with the National Honors Society to offer service hours for members who attend food pantry trips and other events. More information relating to this will be announced at later club meetings.
Kuta’s oldest brother founded Naperville Central’s Veterans Club, one of the most popular service clubs at NCHS. He hopes to gain more participation in Helping Hunger long term to increase its impact on the community.
“When my brother started Veterans Club, there were only seven people in it, and right now we have over 40 members of Helping Hunger. I just want to spread awareness so that we can get more [people] wanting to defeat this issue.”
Helping Hunger meets bi-monthly on Monday mornings at 7:15 AM in Room 227. The next meeting is Monday, Oct. 27.