Joshua Byers | Daily News Students with the STLP program at Southside Elementary pose with the canned food they collected to help local charity organizations.

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289,290 grains of rice is a lot of rice and if Southside Elementary students have their way it will continue to grow.

This year’s global humanitarian project has students at the school going to a web site, sponsored by the United Nations World Food Program, and answering educational questions on subjects like English, Grammar, Science and Math. For every question they answer correctly, 10 grains of rice are donated to countries in need.

Christy McCoy, coordinator for the Student Technology Leadership Programn at Southside, called the efforts of the students “astounding”

“The whole premise is educating children when they’re young and then they’re less likely to end up in poverty,” McCoy said.

The Student Technology and Leadership Program has 24 students in third, fourth and fifth grades and they do community projects, including a recent canned food drive.

“We asked each class to bring a specific food, it was very organized,” she said.

Some of the food will be going to the Tug Valley Recover Shelter and some will go to Jacob’s Well.

“We’re feeding those at home as well as feeding those abroad,” McCoy said.

Caden Maynard, a third-grade student at Southside, said he understands it’s important to feed those living in poverty “because they’re hungry and they have nothing to eat and they’re poor.”

Many of the other students echoed what he said and almost all said they knew someone in their family who had just lost a job.

A group of four students, Logan Maynard, Gavin Fields, Sierra Lowe and MacKenzie Maynard, will be presenting the group’s project “Fight Against Famine” on Nov. 27th at the Kentucky Expo Center in Pikeville as part of the Kentucky Department of Education’s STLP district contest.

“We meet 3 to 4 times a week and all of the kids in the program have helped in some way or another,” McCoy said.