High School Group 'Feeding COMO' Holds Annual Fundraiser

Food insecurity is personal to Mira Tosh, and an issue she has been passionate about for years.

“I had a friend in middle school who faced food insecurity and received buddy packs, and I noticed that there was a stigma in middle school,” Mira said.

Four years ago, a teacher assigned an optional project to her freshman class. For some, it may have been another assignment. For Mira? It was the beginning of her legacy at Rock Bridge High School: a club known as Feeding COMO.

“I planned a potluck with trivia and invited a bunch of community members just to see how it would go,” she explained.

That first event was a success.

“We raised a lot of money, and there was great participation, and, of course, lots of food. I got to talk to a lot of people about food insecurity,” Mira said. “It's kind of a hard topic to talk about, but being able to do so, surrounded by food, surrounded by good people who have understanding and willingness to learn, really made my heart happy.”

Feeding COMO started with just Mira. Today, it’s a club with 30 members.

“Each monthly meeting, we do some sort of service project. Sometimes it's like creating snack packs for The Food Bank Market, or it's creating snack packs for teachers at our school,” Mira said. 

Mira and Feeding COMO held their fourth annual fundraising event for The Food Bank at Leech Shelter at Cosmo-Bethel Park in May.

“We try to make it a very fun event. There's a lot of free food. There's going to be trivia. The trivia incorporates some stuff about food insecurity,” she said. “We usually have a bunch of crafts sitting around and games for people to play.” 

This was Mira’s last year participating in the event as a student because she graduated in May. Mira plans to attend the University of Missouri and wants to continue being involved in efforts to improve food security. She also wants a career that will allow her to continue helping people.

“I'm going to double major in public health and biochemistry. I want to be a physician, but I also want to do a lot of work on the community level with nutrition and making sure people have the nutrients needed to have good health,” she said.

As for Feeding COMO? Mira’s legacy will live on.

“We have juniors that have been really involved that will continue to lead the group next year.”