Indiana School Turns Unused Food Into Take-Home Weekend Meals for Needy Students

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Just like our mobile phones, our bodies need recharging every day. Without food or drink, we wouldn’t have the energy to function optimally in our day-to-day activities. Kids need good, nutritious food every day to grow, learn, and keep healthy.

No child should have to worry about where their next meal is coming from, and a pilot program in an Indiana school is helping to address the food shortage problem for children.

Many families in the United States struggle to put enough food on their families’ plates, with more than 12 million kids facing hunger there every day according to Feeding America—that’s one in six who don’t know where their next meal is coming from. And on top of that, there are millions more living on low incomes who are struggling to feed their families as well.

Often, it becomes a choice of either buying food or paying the rent. We need to take care of our kids, as without proper nutrition, children’s learning abilities could be compromised, and developmental and chronic disease may ensue.

Millions of U.S. kids rely solely on the school to provide them with food, and that may be the only meal they get all day. But growing kids need plenty of fuel, so what happens on the weekend—are they being fed? Breakfast and lunch programs in schools are making a difference, but there is much  more to be done to help alleviate the problem.

Elkhart Community Schools in Indiana has come up with a great idea and is working together with Cultivate, a non-profit organization, to ensure kids have enough food on the weekends.

“Our first focus is to collect food that has been prepared but never served from large food service organizations/businesses,” Jim Conklin, co-founder and board president of Cultivate, told TODAY.

“These organizations feed people on a daily basis and many times they have surplus food because the number of people they feed every day varies and is  somewhat unpredictable,” said Conklin.

This ensures that kids who meet the criteria are able to take home frozen pre-packaged meals that are made from the school’s leftovers. They can then take the meals home and eat them over the weekend.

The pilot program, which is supported by the Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Academy Commerce, will enable 20 children from the school to take home eight frozen meals in backpacks every Friday.

This will continue until the end of the school year, reported CBS.

Not only does it take care of the hunger problem, but using the unused foods from the school canteen also cuts down on the amount of food that is just thrown out.

“It’s making a big impact,” said Melissa Ramey from the Chamber’s Leadership Academy. “I am proud of that. It was heartbreaking to hear that children go home on the weekends and that they don’t have anything to eat.”

The Elkhart Schools System, which has 14 elementary schools, 3 middle schools, and 2 high schools in Indiana, hopes to introduce the innovative program into other schools. The school system is currently working on expanding the food program, according to FOX News.

What a great way to manage food wastage while at the same time providing much-needed food for hungry school children.

This is one idea that has the potential to be implemented on a much bigger scale.