People to be thankful for: Claire Miller, St. Charles North High School

It was August 2015 when Claire Miller set a goal that would make her senior year at St. Charles North High School both memorable and meaningful.

She grew up volunteering with her family at Feed My Starving Children in Aurora and Schaumburg, packing meals for less fortunate youths around the globe. But now she wanted to do more than pack boxes of food. She wanted to be responsible for the actual food.

But therein was the challenge. The minimum fundraising goal was enough cash to feed about 300 children for an entire year - $22,000. At Illinois' $8.25 minimum wage, Miller would have to work 2,667 hours to earn that kind of cash. That's nearly 600 hours more than the typical full-time employee works in a year.

"My family wanted to help, and I had some friends at both high schools that wanted to help," Miller said. "But we learned pretty fast that it was going to be a lot more work than we were expecting."

Miller and her team didn't shy away from the effort. If they had to talk to every business in St. Charles to solicit donations, they would. If they had to beg all of their families, and friends' families, and classmates' families to donate, they would. If they had to sell doughnuts, at $2 each, at school in the mornings, they would. And they did.

Miller and her team even got the mayor and city council to draft a proclamation putting the endorsement of the city behind their mission. They made a promotional video on YouTube. They reached out to donors on Instagram.

"I knew that I couldn't stop pushing," Miller said. "There were a lot of people and different things that were individual roadblocks. But, slowly, the little donations started to add up."

Almost too slowly. It wasn't until just a few days before the Nov. 6 deadline that they reached the $22,000 goal.

"When I realized we did it, I started crying," Miller said. "It was just amazing to see that we reached this goal we had this entire time. We were finally able to realize that everything we'd done paid off."

On Nov. 6, Miller and volunteers from all around St. Charles came together to pack nearly 109,000 meals. That food will feed 300 children in 70 countries around the world for an entire year.

"Even though I started it, I wouldn't have achieved it without the help of so many people," Miller said. "Feed My Starving Children is an incredible organization. But it was even cooler to do this along with the St. Charles community."