Kenmore students lead hunger fight

About a decade ago, Debbie Fullerton left her position at a poverty-stricken school district in Virginia for a sixth-grade teaching job at Moorlands Elementary School in Kenmore.

In Virginia, she said, most of her students qualified for free or reduced-price lunches. During summer, without those meals, they often scoured food courts at local malls, looking for leftovers.

In Kenmore, poverty isn't as evident, Fullerton said — but it exists.

Hopelink, an organization that serves homeless and low-income families in north and east King County, is wrapping up its annual End Summer Hunger campaign, which helps feed families whose children rely on free and reduced-price lunches during the school year.

Forty-five schools, including Moorlands and Frank Love Elementary in Bothell, where Fullerton volunteers as an art docent, are helping to raise money. And this year, for the first time, Fullerton's students are doing the organizing and fundraising at the two Northshore schools.

In the past, the PTAs were in charge.

"It's amazing to watch their confidence grow in themselves and also to realize that kids can take leads," Fullerton said of her students.

To raise money for Hopelink this year, Fullerton adopted concepts from the Empty Bowl project, which was started by an art teacher in Michigan.

Students painted and glazed bowls that Fullerton purchased with a $300 grant from the Northshore School District. Fullerton's sixth-graders and their first- and second-grade reading buddies used them to collect spare change from friends and family at a bingo night in April.

"Kids helping kids is really the gist of what we're trying to do," said Moorlands first- and second-grade teacher Michelle Wytko, whose 22 students work with Fullerton's class. "They have such a genuine willingness to help others that we just wanted to foster that."

The students raised about $460. They kept the bowls as a symbolic reminder of hunger.

"Every day, kids around the world look at an empty bowl," Fullerton said.

For several years she has incorporated a unit on poverty into her curriculum to coincide with Hopelink's campaign. Students read novels and essays written by homeless people and write stories from the perspective of a person in need.

At Frank Love, Fullerton's fourth-graders hope to raise money at a June 12 barbecue and art walk. Moorlands and Frank Love have participated in the End Summer Hunger program since about 1995.

Last year, students at north and east King County schools raised $42,000 of the $74,000 Hopelink collected for the campaign. Most of the donations buy food for local food banks, but some go to transitional housing, child-development services and literacy programs.

Tiffany Wan: 206-464-8305 or twan@seattletimes.com