Raising awareness of hunger was one of the reasons 289 local Jewish teenagers came together through BBYO for a pre-screening of “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1” last month.

BBYO brought the idea of the national Jewish community event to Lions Gate Entertainment, which embraced the idea and wanted to support it. Seniors Michelle Koverman of Parkway Central High School and Sam Kahn of Ladue Horton Watkins High School, spearheaded the effort to create a community-wide event.

“It’s a great way for everyone to come together as a Jewish community not just as BBYO, not just as NFTY, and not just separate organizations,” Michelle said. “But to come together as one and to bring advocacy to hunger and, at the same time, celebrate the ‘Hunger Games’ movie.”

Instead of a ticket, each student brought a canned food item to donate to the Harvey Kornblum Jewish Food Pantry.

“We collected about 900 cans/non-perishable items before the movie premiere from our BBYO teens and families,” said Michelle. “But we ended up collecting over 1,300 items.”

The competition among Jewish youth organizations began in October, and really gained momentum through the weeks that followed. The youth groups involved included: BBYO, NFTY, USY, NCSY,  Israeli Scouts, JSU, and JOLT.

“I know other cities soldout and they brought the Jewish communities together as well,” said Michelle. “It’s a great way for everyone to come together as a Jewish community.”

Teenagers at the theater believe that there is a chance of more collaboration among all of the youth groups.

“There’s also a lot of prejudice that you can’t be in more than one youth group, but now that we are all together, I think that we are going to have a lot of people joining different youth groups,” said Parkway Central junior Max Baron. “It’s going to be a lot of fun and the Jewish youth community in St. Louis will flourish.”

The event was an overall success.

“I think it was extremely successful. We sold as many tickets as we could,” Sam said. “People were having a good time”.

The presidents of each youth group have decided to meet in the near future to discuss possibilities of  joint Jewish programs.