This year, Nov. 19-20, marked the 12th annual Fill the Dome event. Every fall, students from over 50 different schools in the Fargo area come together in order to fill the entire floor of the Fargodome with food. This food is distributed to regional families in need by the Great Plains Food Bank, which has been working for the past 35 years in order to end hunger in our community.

Fill the Dome is not only helpful, it’s also fun. Every year, there is a different theme for the students to rally behind. This year’s theme was “Hunger Has No Face”, meaning that there is no specific ‘look’ or ‘type’ of person that can go hungry. Hunger affects us all in various ways, and it will until it is eradicated, ergo, “Hunger Has No Face”.

This slogan is the inspiration behind the annual design competition, as well. All of the different schools are grouped into teams for this competition, and each team gets a chalked-off area on the floor of the Fargodome and has to use their cans and boxed goods to make a giant mozaic of sorts based off of the theme. Schools must use all of their cans in their design, and cannot take cans from other sites, so it can be rather difficult. StuCo junior Philip Dowdell described it best. “All these schools here, all this food, it’s absolute CAN-demonium!”

North’s design for the contest comprised of 4 faceless stick figures holding hands, standing on grass and each having a heart beneath them. In lieu of faces, each figure had one word, which, when put together, spelt out “We are the face.” Davies won the award for bringing the most food, and South High won the design competition. Their design was a giant pacman, which is coincidentally the same design that North did three years ago.

Freshman StuCo member Natalie Syverson was very excited for her first Fill the Dome event, describing it as a new experience and saying “So far, it’s been a lot of fun… everybody is working together to finish it.” She was happy that the months of planning that Student Council had done had been worth it, especially when the numbers came in.
In total, the students raised 193,201 lbs of food. That calculates to approximately 160,000 meals which will go to families throughout the region, as staggering amount compared to the rest of the country.

Fill the Dome is actually the largest youth-led food drive in the United States, and it has raised over 2.3 million pounds of food and over $553,000 since it started in 2007. According to senior class president Morgan Mastrud, who has been participating in Fill the Dome since the fourth grade and has seen tremendous growth in the event, “I think it’s really cool to see how the local schools come together to raise food for locals in our community that may even be in our own schools.”

Overall, this year’s Fill the Dome event was a complete success. The food and money raised will help to relieve many area families of the immeasurable fear of hunger, and the event once more showcased the strength of our community’s youth. This event demonstrates that not only can young people band together for a cause, they can make an incredible difference for that cause.