Graduate students from Kent State’s College of Public Health are hosting the third annual “Fill the Truck” food drive for Kent Social Services’ food pantry.

“The food drive is a class project that involves a hands-on learning experience for us,” public health graduate student Samantha Lingenfelter said. “We learn how to plan a health intervention, implement it and then evaluate effectiveness after the intervention is complete.”

The students are hoping to collect 6,000 nonperishable and personal care items through donations from the community, Lingenfelter said.

Students and volunteers will be distributing more than 2,000 paper bags to different homes and businesses in Kent during the first week of April and will return to collect the bags from neighborhoods Saturday, April 5.

Members of the community who receive a “Fill the Truck” bag are encouraged to place their donation bags on their front porches, Lingenfelter said.

Public health graduate student Rose Penix said the graduate students enrolled in the Planning, Implementation and Evaluation course hope the food drive will ultimately benefit those in need in the city of Kent.

Graduate student Jim Haven said public health workers are inherently concerned with the welfare of the community in which they live, so this particular project is very fitting.

“Myself and my classmates hope to gain insight into the process of devising a community program, putting that program into action and afterward evaluating that program to see if it was a success and if it could be improved upon in the future,” Haven said.

Contact Halie Rogers at [email protected].