7-year-old Graeme did something unusual recently. “He came home from school and started pulling food out of our pantry. And I said, ‘What are you doing?’”

The Matthews, Virginia, first-grader explained his school was doing a canned food drive. Immediately intrigued, mom Amber Williams learned that Graeme had been told some statistics at school about families with food insecurity.

First-grader Graeme helps make sure classmates’ families, community, have enough food

“He likes math. He likes numbers,” Amber explains, “And when I said ‘one-in-six kids [may be going hungry],’” Graeme immediately realized: “’That’s three kids in my class. That’s this many kids on my baseball team.’” That personalized the statistics for Graeme, “that he probably knows kids who didn’t have food at home,” says Amber.

The Food Drive Is On!

Mother and son pray together nightly – and Amber noticed Graeme’s prayers grew more focused night-after-night. And when they would go to the grocery store, people would ask why they were buying so many canned foods. This gave Graeme the opportunity to share about the school food drive – and gave him additional things to pray about that night.

Graeme’s reason for getting involved was very focused: “Because I’m sad to think some of my friends might not have enough food at home.” He said he and God talked a lot about the need – and it makes him feel “happy…good” to know that he’s helping people who are hungry.

Needless to say, Amber is “very proud of him for caring for other people and realizing that he can help, that he can make a difference – and then going above and beyond to actually pray – and ask people to pray for – what he’s trying to do. I was really proud of him!”

Success and then some!

As for how many cans of food Graeme and his classmates contributed, it was 500 cans – exceedingly above any goals they had imagined!