Food Drive to Help Needy All Year : Ventura: The increasing success of Cheers for Children allows the expression of goodwill to go on after the holidays.

Separating canned beans from beets and setting packaged noodles apart from rice, dozens of volunteers worked Friday to continue a 42-year-old Ventura school district tradition of preparing holiday food baskets for the needy.

But this year will be a little different: The charity will continue after Christmas.

With the amount of food and money donated by district students and staff growing every year, organizers of the annual Cheers for Children drive have decided to extend the goodwill effort year round.

Since the drive began in 1952, the number of food items collected by children from all 24 schools has grown to about 55,000.

And Cheers for Children’s bank account is bulging with a reserve of about $5,000, sponsors say.

All that is more than is needed for the 350 food baskets volunteers are putting together this weekend to deliver Christmas Eve to some of the poorer families in the district.

So this year, leftover groceries will go into storage and the extra money will be set aside for making food baskets for students who are victims of house fires, financial setbacks or other emergencies.

“If a school knows a family is in need in November or in April for whatever reason, if there’s a crisis . . . it is an extra resource to give to parents,” said Sheridan Way School Principal Trudy Arriaga, who has headed the drive for years. “That money is doing nobody any good sitting in a bank account.”

Teachers and other school employees donate money to buy hams for each food basket. But most of the food comes from the children. And for many students, the charity drive has grown into a good-natured competition.

Collecting jars of applesauce, cans of peas and other foods from neighbors or their own pantries, children vie for their classes or schools to be the best at bringing in the goods.

This year, Balboa Middle School was No. 1, with students there collecting 10,504 items of food, more than nine items per student and a record for any school.

The really difficult part of the food drive may not be in gathering the goods, but sorting them.

As volunteers worked Friday, separating foods by type to prepare for packing the charity baskets today, some had trouble deciding where to put what.

While most donations are staples like noodles, beans and rice, many others defy categorization: a large box of powdered diet drink, a jar of Oriental plum sauce and cans of sardines.

“What are these?” 11-year-old Tyler Harris asked, as he held up a small can to an older volunteer. The food turned out to be stuffed vine leaves, apparently imported from Greece. But that didn’t help Tyler, who still didn’t know which table to put it on.

So he put the can back where he found it, and turned his attention to peanut butter and Cheerios.