Tom Tolen / news@whmi.com

Thanks to the efforts of the Kindness Club at Lakes Elementary School in Hartland, a local food pantry is the beneficiary of 280 boxes of cereal.

The club is composed of about 15 students from the four 4th grade classrooms at Lakes. Their teachers are Chris Foster, Jen Rodgers, Sara Fredrick and Stephanie Lange. The Kindness Club has taken on other projects, as well. Earlier this year, the club helped to facilitate the donation of nearly 3,000 loaves of bread to the Gleaner’s Community Food Bank in a collaboration between Round and Lakes elementary schools.

School psychologist Dr. Toni Johnson and school social worker Leslie Leemgraven got the idea of donating boxes of cereal by watching a video of the Cereal Box Domino Challenge.

Rather than duplicating a domino game, they decided to initiate a drive, with school officials’ approval, to collect boxes of cereal and donate them to a local food bank. Anabel Sicko, a University of Michigan social work intern at Lakes, reached out to Bountiful Harvest, a food pantry located behind the First Presbyterian Church on Grand River in Brighton. It was an easy choice. “I reached out to Bountiful Harvest because I wanted to find a smaller food pantry in the area so that the kids in Kindness Club could see the impact of their work closer to home," she says.

Bountiful Harvest Vice President Tina Thalacker says the Lakes students are rock stars. “The 4th Grade Kindness Club blew us away when they managed to collect 280 boxes of cereal in just three weeks,” she says. “The Lakes Elementary donation will have aa big impact on Livingston County families by putting cereal back on the table while also helping ease family food budgets.”

The group has one remaining project this school year — collecting items such as toys, treats and leashes for newly-adopted pets at the Livingston County Animal Shelter.