ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014\u00a0Members of Lighthouse Central Florida\u2019s teen transition program are donating hundreds of items to a local food pantry after hosting their own food drive.<\/p>\n
Lighthouse staff work with people \u2014 from kids to seniors \u2014 who have vision loss. Leaders say the organization works with 600 individuals and their families each year.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
Teens with Lighthouse Central Florida hosted their own holiday food drive
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More than 300 items will be donated to United Against Poverty Orlando
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Lighthouse staff work with kids, adults, and seniors experiencing vision loss
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Leaders say the food drive helped teens with skills, independence, and maturity\u00a0<\/p>\n
This year, teens in the program organized the food drive on their own. They created the flyer, social media posts, collected donations and organized the items at their Orlando location.<\/p>\n
Kerri Marczuk, vice president of program services, says she\u2019s seen a lot of maturity in the group through the food drive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey drafted a letter that went out to our entire staff. They created the flyer,\u201d explained Marczuk. \u201cThey are really taking ownership of it, and it\u2019s nice to see the pride they have in what they\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
While they\u2019re giving back to the community, this food drive is a learning experience for the teens by preparing them for the future and working on skills such as technology and team building.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt simulates what you need to do for later on in life. It\u2019s those soft skills for job readiness,\u201d said Marczuk.<\/p>\n
The group collected more than 300 items, such as canned and boxed food, plus personal hygiene items. It will be donated to United Against Poverty Orlando, a food bank and grocery store.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014\u00a0Members of Lighthouse Central Florida\u2019s teen transition program are donating hundreds of items to a local…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[3076,1191,1015,4369,1548,115,1335,139,141,140],"class_list":{"0":"post-74932","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-app-good-news","9":"tag-christmas","10":"tag-emma-delamo","11":"tag-food-insecurity-and-hunger","12":"tag-good-news","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-orange-county","15":"tag-orlando","16":"tag-orlando-headlines","17":"tag-orlando-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}