MIDLAND, Texas — The West Texas Food Bank has partnered with the West Texas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects to host "CANtribute" at the Midland Park Mall.
The project is a design-based food drive involving students from Midland High School enrolled in a problem-solving engineering class.
“The Midland High students, the engineering students, are building, taking canned goods and building cool architecture features from those canned goods," said Brent Oden, director of programs at the West Texas Food Bank. "And then they’re donating them to the West Texas Food Bank.”
Participating in this project allows the students to get real world experience using the skills that they’ve learned in class, while also helping their community by raising awareness for hunger.
“I think as far as for the students, it's always been, for me, since I started teaching years ago, project-based learning," said Jessie Ortiz, CTE teacher at Midland High School. "So this is one thing they actually utilize. I told them 'Alright guys, pull out your algebra and geometric equations,' and they're like 'wait, I didn't think we'd ever use it again.' I said, 'Oh yeah, real world applications. Let's go, let's do it.'”
The American Institute of Architects was more than willing to give these students a chance to flex their creative muscles.
“So it’s pretty amazing because we used to do this as just an architecture and engineering firm in our office, and we would design the sculptures, and we were building the sculptures, but it really wasn’t a learning opportunity for us," said RJ Lopez, president of the West Texas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. "But when I approached Mr. Ortiz about doing it with his class, he was excited because he knew his students would jump in on it, and they have.”
The sculpture exhibits will be up until May 19.
There will also be bins near them where the community can put canned food they'd like to donate.