Adam Prudhomme
Editor
Fewer students across the region will go to class hungry thanks to an $8,000 donation from 100+ Women Who Care Lennox and Addington to The Food Sharing Project.
Representatives from both organizations were at the Lennox and Addington County Courthouse on Tuesday morning for the official cheque presentation.
The Food Sharing Project is a registered charity that provides nutritious foods to schools throughout the Kingston area-including 16 across Lennox and Addington-to support in-school breakfast, lunch and hearty snack programs. Each week of the school year, a team of 12 volunteers pack about 450 boxes of food which are delivered to 88 schools across the Kingston, Frontenac and Lennox and Addington, covering four separate school boards.
The donation comes at a very opportune time amid the rising cost of living.
“More families are finding it difficult so they’re accessing the food program more, so we need even more food and then we’re paying the higher price,” said Andy Mills, executive director of The Food Sharing Project. “We’re kind of getting smacked both ways there. It’s easily $100,000 more than last year for the same food, and then there’s been growth on top of that.”
Mills attributes many of the struggles to the pandemic as more and more families find it difficult to make ends meet. In 2019 The Food Sharing Project was doing about $12,000 worth of food each week, that number has climbed to $21,000 a week.
To avoid stigma, food bins are set up in classrooms and students can select any nutritious snack of their choosing, no questions asked. Mills says while this means children who may not necessarily need the program will end up taking some of the food, in the long run it’s worth it to ensure those who do need it will feel comfortable enough to use it.
“It’s not a needs based program, it’s a nutrition based program,” said Mills. “It’s based on research that shows nutrition, as we know, lunch is late you get a little ‘hangry’ and you don’t function as well. To have a kid in school who maybe hasn’t had breakfast or maybe not even dinner the night before and they’re trying to do math. You can’t do that. The idea is it’s nutrition for nutrition sake, so if you need it, it gives you energy for gym, you can think, your brain works a little better. By doing that and making it accessible to everyone you catch all those students that maybe come from a low-income household. They don’t have to identify as that.”
It’s estimated one in nine families in KFLA experience food insecurity.
100+ Women Who Care raise their funds strictly through donations from its members. At each meeting members have a chance to nominate a charity to be recipient of their next donation, with this time around Laurie French successfully nominating The Food Sharing Project. The group makes four donations per year.
For more information about The Food Sharing Project, visit www.FoodSharingProject.org.
To learn more about 100+ Women Who Care or to find out how to become a member, visit https://www.100womenlennoxaddington.ca/.