Aspiring Eagle Scout Collects Over A Ton Of Donations For Local Food Bank

[Sept. 7, 2020: Justin Adams]

CENTENNIAL, Colo. (CBS4)– Jake Lazar isn’t your average 17-year-old. The Cherry Creek High School senior is an Aspiring Life Scout who helped make a huge donation to the Jewish Family Services Wineberg Food Pantry. But that’s just scratching the surface.

The project to collect the donations were a part of his Eagle Scout Service Project. In Eagle Scout requirement #5, the aspiring scout is to plan, develop, and give leadership to others in a service project.

“It’s an important step of becoming an Eagle Scout and definitely teaches you how to be a role model in your community and lead especially, in this time in the community,” Lazar said.

Jake and 20 other troops decided to serve at the Jewish Family Services with the goal of collecting 400 pounds of food and essentials. Jake spent a month drawing up plans and the routes his troops would follow to gather the donations in the Walnut Hills Community in Centennial.

“We had about 300 bright and green bags and inside the bags we had a pamphlet of everything that people needed to donate and a little bit about the project, and what our goal was. And we would take the bag and put it on someone’s doorstep,” Lazar said.

“And then we would come on the same route as the bags were on and collect those bags.”

As he started placing the bags in his garage, he realized he had more donations then he could have imagined.

“There was already two rows of bags and I was like, huh, that’s like 20 pounds and there’s about 40 of them. I was like yeah, this is definitely good,” Lazar said.

Good is an understatement. Jake and his troops collected more than 2,600 pounds of donations. He needed eight large carts to deliver all the donations to the local food pantry.

“They were just in shock because there was like donation after donation and full cart after full cart. I think right after they saw that they knew something was coming,” Lazar said.

The experienced taught Jake a valuable lesson about the effect he and his other aspiring eagle scouts can have when they work together to serve the community.

“That was just really inspiring and I think I learned just how much a true community collaborative community approach can work and raise.

“The feeling I got when I gave back it just makes you feel good.”

This Brighter Side of News post courtesy of CBS4 Denver at denver.cbslocal.com/.

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