Some good news.
Low-income students in the Elkhart, Indiana area are being sent home with twenty frozen meals on Fridays. The students get two meals per day during the school week (breakfast and lunch). But on weekends and evenings, students and their families may not have enough to eat.
Elkhart Community Schools has partnered with the non-profit Cultivate to distribute leftover cafeteria food for the weekends. The pilot program is starting with just a few students at one elementary school — what a brilliant idea.
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 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."
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Let’s hope this ingenuity gains momentum and, good healthy food is available to all students that may not get a meal at home.