A friendly contest in Baker City has taken on a nutty aspect.

The Baker High School student council has organized Peanut Butter Madness, a community-wide contest to see who can collect the most 16-ounce jars of peanut butter for the Baker City Backpack Program.

The program provides food baskets to students to take home during the weekend.

The BHS students designed a bracket for the organizations participating in the contest, and each Wednesday until May 15, those who collected the smallest amount of peanut butter will be eliminated from the bracket.

Toni Zikmund, a business and leadership teacher at BHS, said those who are removed can join forces with the remaining teams to help boost their numbers to win the final prize.

The prize will be announced and a thank you prize will be given to all of the participants.

Zikmund said Baker High School has received $5,000 from the Community 101 Foundation to help local nonprofits.

“We get to run the whole process so the kids learn about giving and service learning,” Zikmund said.

The backpack program has applied for Community 101 aid for years. And although BHS students can’t always help fill the food packages, they wanted to help in some way.

“It’s hard for the kids to get down and help fill the backpacks because they’re in school at the time,” Zikmund said.

They were recently contacted by organizers of the backpack program who had a problem with a shipment of peanut butter.

Zikmund said the program uses around 200 jars of peanut butter a week.

She suggested to the students that they start a peanut butter drive. They were excited.

“But we were a little worried that the high school alone wouldn’t be able to get enough for them and so we just started brainstorming,” Zikmund said.

So far there are nine competitors: BHS, Baker Middle School, the City of Baker City and Baker City Fire Department, Baker County Courthouse, Behlen Mfg., D&B Supply, Baker City Police Department, Baker County Sheriff’s Office and Oregon Trail Electric Cooperative. Donations can be brought to any of those locations.

Zikmund said she would like to see this become an annual event.

“I’ve been having all sorts of ideas of ‘next year we should try it this way,’ ” Zikmund said.