Liam Welge has been leading donation drives for a while.
“I love helping out people. It’s just always something I do,” he said.
The 14-year-old, Quaker Valley Middle School eighth-grader has led sweater, book and food drives.
His latest endeavor has been spearheading a district-wide food drive for the Sewickley Community Center’s food pantry and the Center of Hope in Ambridge. But, he’s done a lot more than just raid his parents’ kitchen for canned goods.
Welge, a student council co-chair of the school’s service community, has written letters to potential donors including Target, Walmart and Giant Eagle, in addition to producing informational videos that are posted on Facebook.
He has coordinated the gathering of around 1,000 items for donation at the middle school – and he still has some shopping to do from all the checks he’s received.
“Liam has been really instrumental in pulling this entire thing off,” said Anthony Mooney, middle school principal. “He has gone above and beyond contacting businesses and getting donations from places like Walmart, Target and State Farm (Insurance) representatives.”
Danielle Schultz is a middle school counselor. She also oversees the student council’s service community group, which typically organizes a food drive in November. The pandemic complicated that timeframe, so the group decided to postpone the drive until February, which is known as kindness month.
“He’s done phenomenal in the amount of donations he got and he helped encourage all the other schools to participate,” Schultz said.
Schultz said Edgeworth Elementary School collected 40 boxes of food items, along with 10 bags of canned goods. Osborne Elementary School collected 29 boxes. She said the high school is still collecting items and the middle school had nearly 1,000 items — which were mostly gathered by Welge.
The district’s maintenance crew will deliver everything to Sewickley Community Center and the Center of Hope in Ambridge on March 1.
Welge is working to pass down his knowledge and experience of leading food drives to sixth-grade students who plan to take the helm of the service community once he moves up to high school next year.
“It feels great to be able to do this,” he said.
