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Credit: Emily Chacon, Kazu Koba, & Bridget Parrino

Foothill hopes the odds will be with Ventura Unified School District as they held their first annual “Stop Hunger Games” over the last two weeks.

This year, Foothill did a spin on the “Hunger Games” series to get students more involved with Ventura Unified School District’s annual Cheers for Children food drive.

Foothill helped collect dry food items like bread mixes, muffin mixes and jello.

The student body was divided into “districts” that would compete against each other to “stop the hunger.”

“We broke the school up into six districts by pod, and all the classrooms that make up that pod make up that district,” ASB Special Activities Coordinator Evan Askar said. “There were two students from each classroom helping to represent their district.”

ASB held the first annual reaping ceremony on December 4. Each of the representatives went onto the stage during lunch two or three times each week to participate in activities to help their district win.

The activities held at lunch included making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches blindfolded, making gingerbread houses out of graham crackers, participating in a nutrition quiz, doing relay races, and an ending victor ceremony today.

Freshman Josh Mogdlin enjoyed watching the tributes participate during lunch, and liked how fun it was this year. 

“I liked how the school incorporated the ‘Hunger Games’ aspect into the food drive with the ‘districts’ competition, which made it more fun donating food,” he said. 

Senior Tara Yanez felt that “Stop Hunger Games”  events helped bring the school together.

“It was a good team building thing, and it was nice to meet people you may not have before,” she said.

ASB kept track of the amount of food and points earned during activities so that they could determine a final district winner at the end of the two weeks.

“We have thermometers for each district and it measures the level of the amount of food brought in. All the lunch activities helped score points for each district,” Askar said.

This year’s district winners were from the I Pod. On Friday, the pod was rewarded for their achievements, and got out of their 4th period class early to celebrate.

This year, Foothill collected 818 boxes and cans of food to to be donated.

The food is being sorted and boxed at Balboa Middle School today to be delivered to Ventura Unified School District families on Christmas Eve.