Carmel High has become the first high school to directly participate with This Bar Saves Lives, an organization that sells snack bars to fund the fight against world hunger.
Jess Plinck, a CHS junior and the ASB vice president, explains that “for every bar that is sold, [the organization takes] a package of life-saving food and they give it to third-world countries.”
The money spent buying each bar goes to TBSL’s nonprofit partners, which provide impoverished nations with packets of dietary supplements called Plumpy’Nut and Nutributter in order to treat and prevent severe acute malnutrition.
“If it’s given over nine weeks of time, it can bring kids back to their full nourishment,” Plinck says.
ASB originally came up with the idea to bring TBSL to campus while looking for community service projects sponsored by We Day, according to Plinck, “which is a huge concert that gives back to students who [are involved in] community service events.” ASB also got the Interact Club involved in working towards this goal.
A box of delicious Madagascar Vanilla flavored bars. You can feed yourself and a starving child for only $2.
“If people participate in selling our bars, and they sell them at lunch or at football games at our school, then it gives them hours,” Plinck mentions, “and if they accumulate enough hours, then they can go to We Day.”
We Day is immensely popular, attracting the attention of students across the nation, so Plinck says CHS will be lucky to be the very first campus to take on a partnership with TBSL.
“We’re actually the first school to sell these bars … so we have props with them for that.”
The initiative to sell these bars at CHS has been met with great success.
“It’s been really profitable,” the ASB vice president notes. “The first day we started selling…we sold over one hundred bars, and as of right now, I think we’ve sold about six hundred.”
And while these 600 bars may not be a crucial part of the average CHS student’s diet, they correspond to 600 life-saving packets of food that can make a real difference for developing children in developing nations.
Vanilla almond bars can be bought for $2 from the ASB office or at lunch Wednesdays and Fridays in the breezeway.
“They’re really good bars,” Plinck exclaims.
Now CHS students can fulfill their hunger and the world’s at the same time.
-Ari Freedman
