Cans for a Cause: AVID Canned Food Drive

By: Liliana Madrigal

During the days between 11/12 to 11/21, AVID did their annual canned food drive, in which 1st period classes are encouraged to donate canned items for the Visalia Rescue mission.

It is AVID’s 4th year doing the food drive. Their inspiration came from: “It started their [AVID seniors] freshman year. They were looking for community service opportunities to put energy and effort behind and it was brought up in one of our class discussions,” says Mr. Cain AVID advisor.

28-year Redwood teacher Mr. Cain adds, “It was a way to give back to the Visalia community and we identified the need. A lot of the kids know people that have food needs and have seen homeless people in different areas.”

Researching homelessness in Visalia, I found that 1,672 people were reported experiencing homelessness in a 2024 report in the Point in Time, which was made public by the Kings/Tulare Homeless Alliance.

This only makes AVID’s food drive even more incredible to see! One piece of our Visalia community is going through hard times, but are able to be supported by a Thanksgiving meal.

Mr Cain proudly states, “Throughout 4 years, we’ve donated 6,453 lbs of canned food items to the Visalia Rescue Mission.”

The Visalia Rescue Mission is a faith based organization, which is also a non-profit, whose mission is to serve the Visalia community with the help of their donors and volunteers.

AVID President Angelina Miranda, ‘25, says her favorite part of participating in the food drive was “just seeing everyone on campus be excited on how we could help the less fortunate in our community.”

AVID Vice President Vanessa Garcia, ‘25, says, “seeing the school get involved with a small community donation. We [AVID seniors] gradually got better over the years, as we started this freshman year. Having it as our last year makes it a proud moment for all of us and being able to have the tradition of the canned food drive.”

Garcia and Miranda both agree that students should “join AVID. You can still join it and still receive a lot of help, even if you didn’t choose to join freshman or sophomore year. So your senior year you can have some better assistance with your college applications and community service. It’s overall really helpful.”

Each AVID student loves to participate in the annual food drive. Mr. Cain says, “The whole class is like, ‘I love this time of year,’ so that’s a lot of fun because I think it is something that we as a class get to be like, ‘wow we did something.”

An interesting fact Mr. Cain told me was that Mr. Quezada’s classes donated over 500 cans. Mr. Cain says, “The Redwood family really did a good job. It was really fun for us because we got to be the collectors of it and see joy on the faces of the rescue mission workers, but really it was all of Redwood. Mr. Quezada’s class was the winner and they got the donut party.”

Mr. Cain ends the interview with “It’s far more than solving a math problem or analyzing a soliloquy. It just feels good to know you’re helping out.”

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