Funding, Grants & Awards

Leadership Award-Winning Schools Get $5,000 in Tech Tools

• By Michael Hart
• 01/14/15

Five teachers and their schools around the United States will each receive $5,000 of technology tools as recipients of the Lead2Feed Leadership Awards.

In a program developed by the USA Today Charitable Foundation, the Yum! Brands Foundation and the Lift a Life Foundation, the five schools were selected at random from a group of schools that submitted their Lead2Feed World Hunger Challenge projects into the competition.

All the qualifying student-led projects were intended to help with local hunger relief organizations and do everything from volunteer at local food pantries to author children's books about hunger and deliver care packages to families in need.

The financial awards, underwritten by the Yum! Brands Foundation, are intended to be used to obtain tablets and computers that students and their teachers can use in their efforts to make meaningful changes in their communities.

The winning schools are:

• Eisenhower High School, Lawton, OK, which collected $4,000 worth of non-perishable food and $1,243 in cash donations for the local Salvation Army's food pantry;
• First Colonial High School, Virginia Beach, VA, which collected enough food to fill 300 bags of groceries that were then distributed to local residents;
• Harlan County High School Gifted Leadership Program, Harlan, KY, which collected 30,000 pounds of food for people in need at a local event sponsored by the Kentucky State Police. The students also shopped for a week's worth of groceries for a hypothetical family of five living at poverty level to get a sense of how difficult it is to do so;
• McDowell Intermediate High School, Erie, PA, which led an information campaign on hunger issues in conjunction with the second Harvest Food Bank; and
• The Baylor School, Chattanooga, TN, which hosted a fall festival that raised $850 for the Chattanooga Area Food Bank and collected more than 600 pounds of canned goods during a Halloween trick-or-treating event.

Another similar drawing will be held in late March and from those school projects, along with the ones above, the one with the most outstanding student-led hunger relief project will win up to $25,000 for its charitable partner and $20,000 for its school.

Schools interested in applying to be eligible have until March 15 to submit their projects.

"Lead2Feed provides educators with a turnkey service-learning experience for students that teaches collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity," said Diane Barrett, president of the USA Today Charitable Foundation.

The Common Core-aligned Lead2Feed program sponsored by the three foundations incorporates a curriculum that includes leadership principles described in "Taking People With You: The Only Way to Make Big Things Happen," written by David Novak, executive chairman of Yum! Brands.