At Canfield Village Middle School, students became worker elves, dressed for the part in their Christmas pajamas and festive hats, carrying boxes of food to donate to Second Harvest Foodbank.

"In the past we've gathered 2,900 pounds of food and we had a goal of getting 4,000 pounds," Stephanie Ruark, counselor and student council advisor at Canfield Village Middle School said.

It's all part of their annual food drive where hundreds of students get their friends, families and neighbors to help feed our valley.

"From the number of boxes we've collected, we're pretty certain that we far surpassed our goals this year," Ruark said.

Second Harvest Food Bank Associate Director Renee Fuller expressed gratitude for the student's hard work.

"These kids invest so much time in this," Fuller said. "The amount of food drive boxes that they picked up over the last couple of weeks has been the most food drive boxes that anyone's ever taken," she said.

When all was said and done, the students had collected nearly 7,000 pounds of food, surpassing that 4,000 pound goal.

"We needed every single one of those 240 student council members, it was an all hands on deck effort. The teachers have been fabulous, our adminstrators are just the best and just been so encouraging," Ruark said. "It's been a community wide effort and it's just been an amazing experience to be apart of in this community. It just brings tears to my eyes thinking about being apart of it," she said.

"In the 10 years that they've been doing this, they have brought in over 38,000 meals in the area from the food that these middle schoolers have provided," Fuller said.

During a time of much uncertainty and food insecurity, the need is ever increasing.

"We're gonna be there for them as best as we can with all of the wonderful people in our area that are helping and stepping up right now so hopefully the numbers will come down but every year we tend to say the numbers are getting higher and we just do the best we can." Fuller said.

If you'd like to pitch in, your local Sparkle Markets will be collecting donations of nonperishables for the next several weeks.