Woodlands teen earns Eagle Scout badge with meal donations

By Jamie Swinnerton, Staff writer l Nov. 12, 2020 Updated: Nov. 12, 2020 8:09 a.m.

Leafe Sanders, a senior at The Woodlands Christian Academy, started planning his Eagle Scout project back in March but was postponed because of the pandemic. Last month, he organized around 100 volunteers to pack over 40,000 meals for Mission of Hope Haiti.

When choosing the project to earn his Eagle Scout badge, Sanders said he wanted something that he thought would have a significant impact. Through a family friend, he learned about Mission of Hope, a Christian mission organization that operates in several countries now but started in Haiti in 1998.

“I wanted to do something that was impactful and would really help,” Sanders said.

He had done a meal packing event before so he knew a little bit about how they work and what they entail.

Sanders started planning the meal preparation event back in March and originally was going to host the event at his church. But COVID-19 restrictions on church occupancy made that complicated. So eventually he settled on hosting the event at his school, The Woodlands Christian Academy.

Even this step wasn’t a sure thing. The only place big enough was the school gym, which was being used regularly because of volleyball season. But when a home game turned into an away game, they jumped on the opportunity.

Before the Oct. 28 meal packing event, Sanders had to raise $12,000 to purchase the food. He managed to raise it all in a little over two weeks.

“It was a little nerve-wracking,” he said of trying to raise the money in a short amount of time. “I probably was on the phone for a total of over 100 hours just talking to different families.”

He approached fellow students, people at his church, family friends, and even his troop members to raise all of it.

On the day of the event, the food was delivered to the school where it was unloaded. Volunteers in masks and gloves manned dozens of tables in the school’s gym for several hours. By the end of the day, there were 41,040 meals prepared. They were loaded back on the truck and sent off to Mission Hope For Haiti.

“I originally was thinking 60,000 (meals), which would have been doable with more volunteers, but because we had to change locations I decided that 40,000 was more achievable,” Sanders said.

When looking for volunteers, Sanders turned to Tom Earle, the faculty sponsor for the Interact Club at TWCA and coach for cross country and track. The Interact Club has 120 members, so finding volunteers wasn’t hard.

“I loved the idea, I knew it was going to be a challenge,” Earle said, but he also knew that Sanders would be up to that challenge.

Interact Club Assembles Over 40,000 Meals for Mission Hope for Haiti

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