We’ve heard the stories of lunch ladies tossing kids’ lunches in the trash when they couldn’t afford their reduced lunch. Now, here’s a great story coming out of South Bend, Indiana, and the Elkhart Community Schools.
Cultivate, a South Bend-based non-profit, will provide students weekend meals with their elementary school pilot program.
“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, Cultivate. “You don’t always think of a school.”
It rescues the unused food.
“Over-preparing is just part of what happens,” said Conklin. “We take well-prepared food, combine it with other food and make individual frozen meals out if it.”
Twenty students will receive a backpack with eight individual frozen meals every Friday until the end of school.
“At Elkhart Community Schools, we were wasting a lot of food,” said Natalie Bickel, 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.”
What a great program to implement; I hope it does well. If the impact is noticed by other districts, we may see more people stepping in to help.
h/t ABC 33 40
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