Students Feeding Students is a revolutionary project for many reasons; one of those reasons  is that it is a true collaboration between youth and adults. For eight months, adults and students have worked side-by-side—as equals—to address a community need. I believe this depth of collaboration was possible only because of the high level of trust between children and adults in Oak Park. Adults believe that children are capable, and children believe that (many) adults have their best interest at heart. 

This is a radical idea in our society, where the dominant narrative is that kids and adults occupy different worlds and true understanding is impossible. In mainstream T.V., movies, and music, it is rare to see an example of how adults and kids work together. The consistent message is that an equal relationship between children and adults cannot exist, and any relationship between teenage children and adults must be antagonistic. If the perspective of a story is told through a child’s eyes, the adults are clueless or controlling—powers to be subverted. If the perspective is told through an adult lens, children are cute props or not-cute props. 

Yet, from the very beginning, Students Feeding Students (SFS) was conceived as a multi-generational collaboration by everyone involved. Before there was SFS, before there was the OPRF High School Mutual Aid 501(c)3 (the Mutual Aid), before there was anything except a realization that children were hungry in the school, it was clear that student engagement was imperative. Early on, when we were still shopping the idea about the snack cabinets around, Carrie Summy, the executive director of the Oak Park River Forest Community Foundation said, “It has to live within the kids or it won’t work.” We already knew this, but these words became our North Star. 

The basket of snacks

Traditional storytelling demands a linearity, but reality is seldom linear, especially when the story is relational. Where does this story start? It could start in so many places, so I will choose one, knowing the story could start earlier. And maybe we will come back to those earlier moments later. 

I will start the story in the fall of 2025, when I was covering a maternity leave for a special education teacher at OPRF. One of my students was falling asleep in his classes and therefore failing them. He was a senior and in danger of not graduating. At the time, I was already walking around school with a basket full of snacks, so when I called him to my desk to talk about his academics, I offered him the basket. He took two granola bars, 2 apples, and 2 oranges. Later, he came and found me at my office, and asked for two more granola bars and 2 more oranges. The next day was the same, and it became apparent to me that he was profoundly hungry. It turns out, he was a foster child, and his entire diet was three TV dinners a night at home and the free breakfast and lunch at school. He was a 17-year old boy and over six feet tall. This was not enough food. 

When I reached out for support in the school, I was met with a wall of indifference. One administrator sent me a link to Beyond Hunger. In desperation, I reached out to my neighbors, who responded immediately with bags of food and cookware at my door for this child. Of these neighbors, Meghan and Mollie had children at the high school, and were appalled at the school’s lack of support for students with basic needs. This concern was the seed of the Mutual Aid, and Afshan joined us immediately. The four of us became the board members of the Mutual Aid. However, we had not always planned to become a 501(c)3. In fact, we were strongly advised against forming one, and had strongly resisted forming one. To explain why we eventually decided to become a non-profit, we have to tell the story of Students Feeding Students.

We thought small

I could not remember where the idea of the snack cabinet had come from, as it had floated around for some time before Mollie took the initiative to write the idea down as a white paper. According to Mollie, it came from a board member whom I had talked to at a BBQ in September. I also remember talking to another board member at that BBQ, who went home and asked her kids, who told her snack cabinets would be a great idea. Some students at school also remember talking about it with me when I was still working there. What is clear is that the snack cabinet idea always resonated with students, which is important. While free and reduced lunch is a great program, it may not have elicited the excitement that snack cabinets did. This initial excitement was necessary to activate the students and keep them motivated as they worked to bring their vision to fruition. 

At the writing of this blog, Students Feeding Students has been in existence for exactly nine months. Because Students Feeding Students has done so much in that time, I had almost forgotten that our original idea for student engagement was modest. We had envisioned a student advisory council who would give us feedback on what kind of snacks kids wanted.

We thought one of the challenges would be in finding students who would be interested and willing to spend the time. We never imagined our own children would become so vested; they were already so busy with their own pursuits of sports, music, and other extracurricular activities. Yet, as Mollie worked on the white paper about the snack cabinets, she sought counsel from her son Nolan, who proved to be a great sounding board, and when Mollie asked him, “Do you want to start the student advisory council?” He answered yes without hesitation. He immediately recruited students he thought would be interested. Afshan, Meghan, and I have also been talking to our kids, who had expressed interest in joining the advisory counsel. They already knew Nolan, so Nolan reached out to them as well. This work was always relational.

We were explicitly not invited

Nolan started a Snapchat group with interested students and they decided on a date and time, which was the last day of winter break, January 7th, 2026. I reserved a room for them at the library and provided them with snacks. Mollie helped Nolan create an agenda. The adults, however, did not sit in the meeting. We were explicitly not invited. We stayed in the library, in case they needed something, but otherwise the students ran their own meeting. About ten students showed up that day. The first thing they did was choose their name: Students Feeding Students. The group name under which I had reserved the room, Snack Cabinet Advisory Board, had been deemed unacceptable before the meeting had begun. From this point on, the roles switched from the students advising the mutual aid to the mutual aid providing support for the student vision.

Why we became a nonprofit (after resisting)

Once it became clear that the school was not going to immediately fund the project, we knew we would have to do a significant amount of fundraising to manifest the students’ vision. We could not raise this amount with small donations from individual donors; we would have to apply for grants, which meant we would have to either find a fiscal sponsor or become our own 501(c)3. We could not find a fiscal sponsor, and this is when we made the decision to form a 501(c)3 to sustain the vision of the students as they worked to eradicate hunger at OPRF HS. In other words, the OPRF High School Mutual Aid would not exist without our relationship to Students Feeding Students. 

Mika Yamamoto is an educator and former special education substitute at OPRF. She is Co-President of the OPRF High School Mutual Aid, the nonprofit supporting Students Feeding Students, and has two children at OPRF HS.