CHARLEMONT — Hawlemont Regional School fifth and sixth graders learned about the importance of giving back to the community by delivering freshly baked snickerdoodles to the Good Neighbors Food Pantry on Tuesday.
Hawlemont, Agriculture and You teacher Jennifer Sinistore said students bake cookies every year to sell at the school’s farmers market, but this year they opted to also make a few batches to donate to the food pantry, located at the Charlemont Federated Church.
“When I became the HAY teacher, which was three years ago, we started up a farmers market. The sixth graders will help bake the cookies and every grade helps sell them,” Sinistore said. “We always try to do community service, but this is the first time we’ve done this with Good Neighbors.”
Fifth graders were tasked with making the cookies and sixth graders helped package them after they were baked. Together, the students walked to the food pantry to help deliver them, along with toys collected for the church’s toy drive.
Sinistore said Hawlemont students often get involved in the broader community, including through visits with senior citizens who read, sing and join students for other activities. Bringing community members to the school, and in reverse, bringing students out into the community, can help the children see a bigger picture and what impact they can have.
“For the students, they can get a bigger picture. They have their small, little community, but they can see outside their Hawlemont community something bigger,” Sinistore said.
“Students always get so excited to do things out of their normal routine,” she added in an email. “Bringing authentic learning into the classroom makes it so much more engaging and enjoyable for them.”
Sheila Litchfield of the Good Neighbors Food Pantry said that the food pantry had 77 families pick up food during last month’s distribution day and, combined with the weekly backpack program that the pantry has been working on in partnership with various schools in the region, Good Neighbors fed 633 individuals in November.
The pantry is open on the third Tuesday of each month. For December, patrons received supplies for holiday meals, including options of ham or turkey, and six cookies.
Additionally, Litchfield said parents were able to pick up a few toys for their children in the chapel, where Hawlemont students helped separate the donations they had brought, alongside other donations, into different age groups.
“These are great kids,” Litchfield said.
Litchfield said the support of Hawlemont and its students would help make the holidays more special for the pantry’s patrons, many of whom are facing challenges amid changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and requirements for eligibility.
As part of the One Big Beautiful Bill, President Donald Trump tightened work requirements for those receiving SNAP benefits, requiring recipients to work, volunteer or participate in job training for at least 80 hours a month (20 hours a week). The previous work requirement only applied to adults ages 18 through 54 who are physically and mentally able and don’t have dependents. The changes expand those who are required to work up to age 64, as well as adults with dependents over the age of 14. It also narrowed exemption options for individuals who are homeless, veterans or aging out of foster care, and limited the ability of states to waive the work requirement in regions lacking jobs.
Litchfield said the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts did a good job of maintaining food pantry supplies last month during the government shutdown. Still, as more people are impacted by changes to SNAP eligibility, more people will need to turn to Good Neighbors and other pantries to keep their families fed.
“People panicked in November and there were more people coming to all the pantries,” Litchfield said. “Now the risks with SNAP are, as people go to get recertified, they will find out if the work requirement has changed for them, and that is a really troubling thing for a lot of families.”
According to data from the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance, in October, 11,050 Franklin County residents received SNAP benefits.
“We serve this part of West County, but also anybody that needs it. We’ve got people coming from Berkshire County, in Florida and all around,” Litchfield said. “This part of the county has a big need.”
Hawlemont students said they were happy to help their community and get out of the classroom for a little bit.
“We did the important part and put them in and out of the oven,” fifth grader Sophia Mckusick said, “and we did a little testing of the batter.”
“It felt nice helping the community,” added fifth grader Ryder Coates.
