LI student basketball players to make 1,000 sandwiches for the hungry
Students in the Rising Stars Youth Foundation will prepare peanut butter and jelly or sunflower-seed butter and jelly sandwiches for Long Islanders in need. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
Student athletes who play on Long Island's Rising Stars Youth Foundation basketball teams made up to 1,000 sandwiches to help feed the Island’s homeless and underfed during the third annual Hearts and Hoops event Monday in Brookville.
Students in grades 4 to 12 in the competitive, Garden City-based league prepared peanut butter and jelly or sunflower-seed butter and jelly sandwiches to be distributed to soup kitchens and family shelters on Long Island and in Queens, says Emily Ades, director of education for Rising Stars.
The athletes worked from to 7 to 8 p.m. in the cafeteria of Long Island Lutheran High School. The effort was co-hosted by One Sandwich At a Time, a New York City-based grass roots organization that aims to combat hunger.
“All of our kids have to do community service to give back to the community,” Ades says. “We pay it forward.”
Hearts and Hoops aims to promote a team-building spirit that will help kids on the courts as well as helping people in need, Ades says.
Beth Whitehouse writes about families, parenting and great things to do with the kids on Long Island. She’s been a Newsday editor and shared a 1997 Newsday staff Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800.
