For many years, Archbishop Riordan High School has participated in several drives to help members of the community, and this includes the annual Canned Food Drive.

The food drive, which ran from Nov. 6 through Nov. 20, was an opportunity for students, faculty, and staff to help those in need to experience a happy Thanksgiving by donating food to the San Francisco community.

Epifinio Perea, manager of the St. Vincent de Paul Association for about 20 years, received the cans that were donated.

He said, “It has been fantastic, we had a nice group of people today. Eighty-five people came over and [without] Riordan and the other schools involved, we couldn’t be doing this.”

He added, “The major challenge is to try to keep the clientele that we have. We don’t refuse anybody, we set a standard that we have to follow because if we don’t do that, then we could not afford to stay at the St. Vincent de Paul conference.”

“My goal was to see how we would get involved and to see actually how it works because when you first start at anything you don’t really know the process but it did not take too long to know the process how good Saint Vincent de Paul is counteracting with the people,” said Perea.

Joshua Keeney, the co-moderator of the CORE Service Team who helped in the organization of the drive at Riordan High School, said, “It is part of our calling as Christians to provide food for those who do not have sufficient food for themselves. The students have had a delayed response each year, but once the donations began to come in, the students have been very generous with their food.”

He continued, “The CORE Service Team has committed a lot of time to promoting the drive and improving upon our previous success.”

In addition, “We have faced difficulties with communicating the drives to the school in general because of a lack of regularity with the times of telecast during special schedule

Julia Balistreri, who advises the Core Team with Keeney, said, “Contributing to the food drive is extremely important for a multitude of reasons: It is a fantastic way for us to demonstrate our Marianist and Catholic spirit by giving to those less fortunate. We are able to provide for our community during the holidays. It is a chance for us to reflect during a time of thanksgiving, and allows us to recognize how much we have and be grateful for that.”

Balistreri added, “Mr. Keeney and myself have been running the drive since last year. This is our second time putting the drive on and it benefits a parish in the Potrero Hill.”

In addition, she said, “As for all our drives, there is a bit of a lull right at the beginning of drives, but as our CORE team announces it more and more to the school we see a dramatic increase in donations. The mentor groups days also help dramatically – receiving 660 cans donated that day alone.”

The final tally for cans per House were: Cana with 490 cans, Russi with 168, Bolts with 143, and Pilar with 87.

Finally, she said, “The CORE team did a great job motivating the student body, announcing when and where to donate and keeping the momentum going all the way to the last day of the drive.” days. We have also encountered the challenge of where to store the many resources received from students for the multiple drives we have put together so far.”

Finally, Keeney said, “Yes, we have achieved every goal we have set thus far. The CORE Service Team is an amazing bunch of young men who truly commit themselves to hard work and promotion of the good we carry out here.”

Francis Lota ’19 said, “Some of the challenges we faced was trying to get the drive rolled out, organizing the week before, and having people aware. It was really fun it shows the spirit of Christmas because no one can have everything and if you can appreciate something everyone else should be able to.”

Francis added, “After this I am looking forward to bringing service elsewhere and promote service to help our community.”