Friday, Jul. 04, 2008

Feed the Kids for Summer program seeking help

By MICHAEL HINES

News-Mirror Writer

A project to give food to underprivileged students is feeling a bit starved for cash.

Several volunteers bustled inside the fellowship hall of St. Jude Catholic Church on Tuesday afternoon, filling plastic grocery bags with goodies ranging from tuna fish to pudding. The work aimed at providing free food to children on free and reduced lunch in the Mansfield school district as part of the Feed the Kids for Summer event. Set to end in six weeks, the second annual project has already provided hundreds of pounds of food.

Common Ground, a network of local churches with food pantries, has organized the program. Robin Rowe and Victoria Dodd, president and treasurer for the group respectively, have seen a growing need.

"A lot of families need more," Rowe said.

That’s also meant more community support is needed. Already, 1,200 bags of food have been given out, amounting to about 400 bags per week since the project began the first week in June. For the remaining weeks, the program needs about $9,000 to make it.

The summer event started last year. During that eight-week program, more than 2,600 knapsacks filled with food were given out. This go round saw some changes, though.

For one thing, there wasn’t enough money to purchase knapsacks, so plastic bags were used. The economic slowdown has meant altering items given in the packages, as well. For instance, the first year saw recipients get packaged tuna and crackers; this year, there’s just canned tuna; instead of mini-boxes of cold cereal, now just oatmeal is given. Similar reasons meant instead of putting jars of peanut butter in each bag, the peanut butter only went out on a case-by-case basis. Peanut butter prices have gone up 20 percent to 30 percent.

"We’re not giving out anything real extravagant," Rowe said, saying food has been aimed at easy-to-make. "We’re looking at kids who are up to the sixth or seventh grade, at most."

But the economy may also have proven beneficial in other ways. For one thing, the price of gas may be causing folks to stay home for the summer. That could account for the volunteer turnout that seems to have picked up.

"People have been very generous with their time," Dodd said before glancing at those at the church Tuesday. "We’ve never had this many people volunteer for one day."

The focus, though, has been the kids.

Bisbee Food Ministries, Community Action Partners, Living Word Outreach, St. Jude Food Pantry, Wesley Mission Center and Harvesting International have been distributing the vacation-time vittles. Each location has given out dozens of bags weekly: Bisbee has been asking for and distributing 75 bags each week; Community Action Partners has been giving out 25 bags; Living Word has asked for 30; St. Jude for 25; Wesley Mission for 135; and Harvesting International for 50.

People can donate food at Tom Thumb, 980 U.S. 287 North, and the Wal-Mart SuperCenter, 930 N. Walnut Creek Drive, as well as at the food pantries: Bisbee at 3001 Gertie Barrett Road, Community Action Partners at 1188 W. Broad St., Living Word at 107 N. First Ave., St. Jude at 500 E. Dallas St., Wesley at 777 N. Walnut Creek Drive, and Harvesting at 560 Easy Drive.

Monetary donations are also being accepted, and checks should be made out to Common Ground Network, P.O. Box 1049, Mansfield, Texas, 76063. Folks should indicate that the donations are meant for the Feed the Kids for Summer program.