An Indiana school district is working to make sure students have enough to eat. Students usually get breakfast and lunch at school, but a meal for dinner is never promised and neither are meals on the weekends at home, many go hungry.
More than a third of food produced in America becomes food waste, which means that approximately 50 million tons of food annually is going in the trash. What is more alarming is that around one in seven people is faced with food insecurity.
WSBT reports Elkhart Schools is partnering with a local nonprofit called Cultivate to provide weekend meals through the use of unused food. Therefore, an Indiana school district has come up with a genius idea to fight these two problems. They are making sure that the leftovers from the school cafeteria wouldn’t go to waste but instead to kids who might not have enough food to eat at their homes especially on weekends.
“Mostly, we rescue food that’s been made but never served by catering companies, large food service businesses, like the school system,” said Jim Conklin, with Cultivate. “You don’t always think of a school.”
Cultivate makes individual frozen meals out of discarded and unused food. On Fridays, About 20 students are given a backpack with eight individual frozen meals.
“At Elkhart Community Schools, we were wasting a lot of food,” said Natalie Bickel, with student services. “There wasn’t anything to do with the food. So they came to the school three times a week and rescued the food.”
I hope all school districts can implement this kind of program, as long as it doesn’t go beyond what they can actually do. This program is beneficial for children’s self-esteem, well being, outlook on life among other things because it shows them people care. They shouldn’t feel embarrassed or worried about what other kids might say because those same kids just might end up homeless or hungry struggling with their own kids running to a program like this.
We Have Great People In America???? Does anyone have kids in their community who do hungry? What are your solutions?
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