The annual canned food drive will accept food and money donations for the High Plains Food Bank from now until Nov. 30.

Money can be given to class sponsors and $1 equals a five pound donation. Bins for cans are located in class sponsors’ rooms.  In an effort to increase student involvement, this year’s food drive has been given a theme.

“The new ‘Hunger Games’ is coming out in November, and fall is when the food drive is going on,” student council co-president Justin Johnson said. “Since the canned food drive deals with people needing food, we figured why not use ‘hunger’ in the name? It’s something to bring up the food drive, something to promote it, something to make it more exciting for the student body. We want it to be more entertaining.”

Classes are known as districts, class officers are tributes and teachers are caregivers who can support districts by donating cans or money.

“Giving it a theme of The ‘Hunger Games’ is not intended to be a joke,” student council co-chair Callie Boren said. “We want to give them something to be a part of that they can relate to because it’s a part of their lives. That’s our goal in using that theme.”

Boren said the drive offers an opportunity for both students and teachers to be more actively involved.

“We want kids at our school to be more involved because we really do care about our community,” Boren said. “We want to spread that around the school because not everyone gets super excited about bringing a bunch of cans to school.”

Instead of counting how many total pounds a school has collected, this year the High Plains Food Bank will chose a winner based on how many pounds per student a school has collected.

“In years past, our biggest competition would be schools like Tascosa and Amarillo High that just have more kids, but now any school can be competition,” Boren said. “That’s why we want to get more people involved. It’s about pounds per person, and the more people in our school who are involved, the better chance we have at having that percentage instead of just a specific number of cans.”

Student Council and several other clubs will sort canned goods at the High Plains Food Bank distribution center.

“There are a lot of other organizations involved in it,” Boren said. “This time of year we know people are planning for the winter and holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, and some people just don’t have everything they need. The food bank does a really good job of involving the whole community.”

Johnson said the competition is a vehicle for helping the community.

“We’re going to strive for our goal,” Johnson said. “We’re all helping out for one good cause.”