“The reason for our school is to live out the mission of serving others,” said Principal Josh Mears. “This seemed like a prime opportunity to do that. It’s not one we felt like we could turn our backs on. It felt like a necessary moment to teach our students how to respond to an obvious need in our community.”
In January 2024, a parent of a Queen of Peace student read a Journal-News story about Serve City having to shut its pantry down due to financial resources, and Mears said his school “received that as a call to action.”
A few months later, the students collected $6,000 for Serve City, which they were able to use to help establish the Queen of Peace Insecurity Fund at the Hamilton Community Foundation, and open its pop-up pantry.
“I think these donations we are continually receiving are especially important because all these other food pantries and food banks are feeling the stress of the shortage of government commodities to help keep our ministries alive,” said Jeff Gambrell, Serve City community relations and impact director. “With the increase in prices and tariffs, for families to still come out strong supporting ministries like ours is really a testament to how much people care.”
In March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cut $500 million from the Emergency Food Assistance Program, which buys food from farmers and ranches to distribute to food banks and pantries across the country. That impacted Shared Harvest, a food bank that’s part of Feeding America, which distributes food to pantries in several area counties, including Butler County.
The donation made May 30 was the third by Queen of Peace and the first to incorporate a food drive with Ace Hardware and Kroger.
“It starts with community,” said Craig Strunk, general manager at E&H Ace Hardware and Hamilton native. “It’s able to have that big impact in your community. Little things transpire into big things.
Strunk said he knows how times are tough, a lot tougher than when he grew up in the city, and “if we can provide a service, if we can do things like this to ensure we can help people out there, that’s what community is about, that’s what the city of Hamilton is all about.”
Ace Hardware will continue its food drive for Serve City until the end of June.
“We resolved, as a school, we wanted this relationship to be a lasting one, not just a one-off fundraising event,” said Mears. “We wanted to enshrine this relationship as one representing our efforts to serve the ongoing needs of men and women in our community who don’t have homes, don’t have enough to eat.”
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