Submitted photo / Anthony Spano Foundation Dominic Delluomo, left, and Dimitri Kindinis load bags of Thanksgiving groceries to be distributed to families in need across the Mahoning Valley last weekend. The boys are members of The Boo Squad, a charity that teaches children about kindness and generosity toward all people.

BOARDMAN — This Thanksgiving, more than 400 families in the Mahoning Valley had holiday meals because of the kindness of a group of children.

While the group has been making the generous holiday effort for about nine years, its mission originates with lessons learned by a child in darker days about 75 years ago, passed on with the hope of sparing others from such darkness.

Heather Hrina Medvec, a Struthers transplant to Poland Township, is the daughter of a Polish woman born in Germany in the aftermath of World War II.

Hrina Medvec’s grandfather was a worker in a German concentration camp during the war, but survived. Her mother was born in 1947 and the family emigrated to the United States around 1952. Even thousands of miles away from post-war Europe, though, the daughter of people who knew far too much about cruelty soon learned about it first-hand for herself.

“She was severely bullied in elementary school, because she was very poor and spoke broken English,” Hrina Medvec said.

But not everyone was cruel, the girl saw.

“She shared her story about the importance of community and how it played a role in her life,” Hrina Medvec said. “Community helped her family to get on their feet, and she always stressed to me the importance of community and being kind. When I became a mom, that was something I wanted to instill in my kids.”

At first, she said, she thought her daughters were too young to even grasp the concept of community, but she was determined it was worth the effort. At Halloween, she took them to the store and they bought decorative bags and candy. The bags had little ghosts on them that said “Boo.”

“We just started with that small act, delivering those bags to friends and family with notes that said, “You’ve been boo’d, from Madison and Carolyn.”

Hrina Medvec said the reactions from those who were “boo’d” brought such joy to her daughters, she knew she was onto something — the lesson was reaching them.

“You could tell it made them feel good that they made somebody else happy,” she said. “At that moment, I knew it worked.”

She assembled a group of moms at the Poland Library to form The Boo Squad.

The Anthony Spano Foundation hosts the Boo Squad fund, handling all the administrative functions of non profit charity work and leaving the good deeds to its clients.

The website describes the Boo Squad as “a volunteer group for kids aged 7-13. The goal of the Boo Squad is to actively volunteer and educate kids about being compassionate and understanding of others with differences. The Boo Squad will choose an environment or population that the children may not typically be exposed to or familiar with, to teach them that it’s ok to be accepting of and work with others that are different.”

Hrina Medvec said the Thanksgiving drive is just their best-known effort.

The website states that the group has volunteered or donated to several organizations across the Mahoning Valley, including Akron Children’s Mahoning Valley, Beatitude House, Golden String (Purple Cat), Paisley House, Park Vista, Making Kids Count, Go Baby Go, The Rescue Mission of the Mahoning Valley, The Community Kitchen and others, including individual local families.

“We serve all populations and walks of life,” Hrina Medvec said. “We’re getting them to interact with each other through the mission. Whether it’s a generational gap, a physical limitation gap, or financial gap, it helps them understand that sometimes they have a lot more in common than it seems on the surface, and learn how to get past any initial discomfort in those interactions. And we hope it carries over into how they get along at school and in life.”

The group now has about 50 or 60 children from across the Valley. The food drive that started with feeding 10 families eight years ago fed 410 this year.

They conduct a regular food drive in October and November. This year’s event was at Rulli Bros. on South Avenue. Hrina Medvec said they also seek out sponsors, and seek donations through word of mouth, on social media and through ads.

“Every year, we name an honorary chair, and this year it was Dan Santon with Santon Electric,” she said. “He was very helpful and influential in getting a lot of Valley businesses to participate.”

She said Mark Rulli and his staff also were instrumental in making sure the drive succeeded.

“Rulli Bros. provided us with an affordable price to serve as many families as possible, and Mark and his staff worked their tails off in helping us bag and distribute all the meals,” she said.

The meals were all brought to the homes of families in need on Nov. 24.

The food drive received bronze and silver ($250 and $500) donations from roughly 20 businesses and individuals, as well as a $1,000 gold donation from the Hazimihalis family and a $2,500 platinum donation from the IBEW electricians union.