Braden River Middle School students feed the hungry

When I think of a national competition for student technology, I think of ... well ... technology.

What I didn't expect was a project generated by humanity.

Two eighth-grade students at Braden River Middle School have earned a trip to the 2017 National Technology Student Association (TSA) Conference competition at Rosen Shingle Creek in Orlando June 21-25 by feeding the hungry.

Izzy Rines and Sean Davis will represent the school in explaining their community service project in the "Construction Challenge" to a group of judges. They finished second in the State TSA Conference in February in Orlando.

"We started with an idea that maybe we could make a difference," Rines said. "We wanted to build something to help the community."

The idea emerged for the students to build bins they would place at various spots to collect nonperishable food. The idea had a twist.

"We wanted to target people who stay in resorts," Rines said.

Why?

"These tourists bring in food in surplus," Davis said. "When they leave, they can put the extra food in our bins."

I think back to my own eighth-grade days, and I can't remember anyone in my class doing anything so selfless. For those wanting to bash today's brand of kids, take note.

It also must be pointed out that Rines and Davis were just the face of the project. The competition only allows two students to present the material, so they were elected. The project, though, involved a host of other students from Advisor Angela Marshall's TSA class of 32 students. Those students work on projects in the class as well as after school.

"We had to break it down, because there are only two students to a project," Davis said. "But we had a whole team of builders and we had a lot of other people who were eager to help out."

The plans for the bins started to come together in September and the bins started to be placed in February. Parents helped construct the bins after the material had been purchased.

Rines and Davis gave a special shout-out to fellow student, seventh-grader Sofia Figueras, an Adobe Photoshop whiz who generated all the printed material on the front of the prototype bin that would be presented to the competition judges as well as promotional materials to alert people to the bins after they had been placed.

Every time I attempted to shower a little praise on Rines and Davis, they deflected it elsewhere. Think we have a couple of future leaders in our community?

The students eventually custom built bins for the resorts. The first went to Little Gull Cottages in Longboat Key.  In two weeks, they collected 177 pounds of food that was donated to the Food Bank of Manatee. They followed with bins placed at Gulf Tides of Longboat Key, the Longboat Bay Club and the Calini Beach Club in Siesta Key.

The students say they learned a lot about the need for food in a county as affluent as Manatee County. 

"This has given us a sense of community," Rines said.

It gives me a sense we have some pretty special students coming up through the system.