Philanthropy at The Wilder School!

Wilder Memorial Nursery School · Founded in 1924 · Hingham, MA

We Support the Community

Every year the children of Wilder Memorial Nursery School participate in two food drives and collect food for the Quincy Crisis Center and for the Hingham Interfaith Food Pantry. Preschoolers are at an age when they begin to be aware of other's needs. There are classroom discussions about collecting the food and why we share what we have with others. When the collection boxes get filled with the food donations the children bring in to school, they begin to understand. We talk about the empty kitchen shelves in some homes; we want to help fill them so no one will go hungry.

In the month of December it is our tradition to support the Quincy Crisis Center. We collect canned and packaged goods and frozen turkeys. Last year we donated over five hundred dollars, forty turkeys and more than 400 pounds of boxed and canned goods. The Center helps families, particularly single mothers and their children. This will be Wilder's 16th year of donating to the Crisis Center.

The Hingham Interfaith Food Pantry is located in Second Parish Church across Main Street from Wilder and is the site of a field trip by the Wilder children every spring. The children walk to the church while carrying their bags of food to donate to the Food Pantry. Some years they help place the food on the pantry shelves. The volunteers who run the Pantry explain its mission to the children; they learn how their donations will help other families. A book about giving and sharing is read to them by a member of the Food Pantry staff. The Interfaith Food Pantry is one of the favorite field trips for the children.

There are many classroom discussions at Wilder School about the responsibility we have to help others and how when we do give it can make a difference in someone's life. Even the little ones understand this. Through the years Wilder parents and staff have been consistently generous and supportive of both of these causes.