A group of teens in a Maritime community are working together to ensure students in their region finish the school day with a full stomach.

Students from Fredericton’s Leo Hayes High School travel to the Fredericton Community Kitchen once a week to help make lunches for their peers who would otherwise go without.

“It breaks my heart to see that there are so many kids so less fortunate than I am,” says student Islay Purcell.

The Fredericton Community Kitchen prepares 185 lunches every day, which are distributed to children at six city schools.

The Leo Hayes students help out by making sandwiches and packing the lunches.

Purcell says she’s always known some classmates were going hungry, but never realized the situation was so widespread.

“I know what it's like to be hungry, there's been days when I've forgotten lunch, so I do come home starving, but to have that feeling for more than a couple of hours like, I can't imagine,” says Purcell.

Like most teachers, Kim Lightfoot has kept food in a desk drawer to give to students she knew were hungry.

“The custodians here at the school had noticed students digging through the garbage after the other students had gone to class,” says Lightfoot.

One student soon became two, then ten, then more, which prompted Lightfoot to help found Feed The Lions, a group of teachers and students who work together to fight hunger.

“What I do as an educator is a moot point if these students in front of me do not have the food to fuel their minds and bodies to participate and reach their full potential in school,” says Lightfoot.

The lunches provided by the group include a sandwich, a drink, and a cookie or granola bar, nothing fancy, but enough to fill someone’s stomach, if only for a few hours.

“I always knew there was a little bit of an issue with, like, food security I guess you could call it, but I never realized how big it was until the first day that I passed out lunches. I was just amazed at how many students came to get lunches,” says student Marlyne Vanderlee.

Kevin Doria was born and raised in Europe, where, he says, poverty and those in need are much more recognizable.

“I didn't realize, with my first years here, how many students we have in our school that were in need of a lunch,” says Doria.

The grade 11 student says, inside the school walls, those without hide it well.

From time to time Doria says he notices someone eating a lunch he helped pack, a fact he and the others keep to themselves.

“If you don't have a lunch, it's harder for them to concentrate in school and do good in school and we, obviously, want everybody to do very well in school, so it makes me feel good that I've helped other people,” says Doria.

Some schools are now quietly identifying students who need more than just lunch.

Each Friday, the Community Kitchen provides backpacks with enough food to help a student and their family through the weekend.

“If the kids are coming to school without proper food and without proper lunches, very good chance that, on the weekend, there's not enough food in their homes for them to eat over the weekend,” says Jan Lockhart of the Fredericton Community Kitchen.

The backpacks of food come with no strings attached and are delivered with a smile and a sense of understanding.

“All it takes is a chronic illness, a terminal illness diagnosis, employment problems and any one of us could be that family in need and wouldn't we all want that support, without stigma, available for us?” asks Lockhart.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Andy Campbell