In addition to the pantry, Steele is helping raise donations for the flood relief effort in Texas.
They’re still good kids, and they still have good hearts and want to help, too.” “A lot of people talk bad about our students, but they just made bad choices. “A lot of people discount our students,” she said. “She has a very long way to go, but so far her decision-making skills show that, given the choice, she’ll make the better one,” he said. Considering she’s only a freshman now, if she keeps on this path and has good influences, he has confidence she can do “whatever she wants” in life. Lee said the entrepreneurship program is looking into getting Steele a grant to continue the pantry and eventually might give her college credit for her work. They can get some socks, put some deodorant on, and it helps them feel better.” “They don’t want kids knowing,” Steele said. Having those supplies there and ready for use will help struggling students feel more confident, she said, and stop them from standing out. The pantry has been open a few days, and Steele said she has gotten good feedback from students using it. A local bakery also has agreed to donate about 150 loaves of bread every month to students. Steele and another teacher, Jamie Dahlin, recently took half the money and purchased enough food, personal hygiene items, socks and shirts to fill the pantry space, all while Steele picked up such skills as couponing and budgeting.
Lee estimates the money is enough to keep the pantry stocked for about six months. “We wanted to raise $400 in one month,” Lee said. They quickly reached their goal, then surpassed it, and then doubled it. Once the fundraiser was posted, Steele said it went viral, with everyone she knew sharing the link. To launch the project, Lee helped Steele experiment with Facebook’s new fundraising tool. “She wanted to do something to help the homeless because that is a direct impact issue with her,” said Steele’s teacher, Jonathon Lee. When she started working with Gulf Coast State College’s entrepreneurship program during the summer, brainstorming ideas and projects, she knew she wanted to find a way to give students the security with which she herself struggled. According to her teachers, though she’s come a long way, Steele’s own home life is unstable, with her mother moving from hotel to hotel and several recent roadblocks shaking her already unsteady foundation. Steele knows firsthand what it’s like for those homeless students.
But for Steele, fundraising for the pantry was more than just a way to help her fellow classmates - it was a way to help herself, too. To help address that need, freshman student Savannah Steele has started the school’s first food pantry.
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PANAMA CITY - At AMIKids Panama City Marine Institute, where many students have no fixed address and 30 percent have no discernible adult supervision, the security of a clean pair of socks and a full stomach can be hard to come by.