Advertisement

Fox Chapel students help fill bags with food for families in need

 
Fox Chapel Middle eighth-graders Destiny Harvey, 14, front right, and Samantha Miller, 14, start an assembly line for the Feeding Children Everywhere project to fill bags of food. 
Fox Chapel Middle eighth-graders Destiny Harvey, 14, front right, and Samantha Miller, 14, start an assembly line for the Feeding Children Everywhere project to fill bags of food. 
Published Feb. 26, 2015

SPRING HILL — Hairnets are not considered stylish in middle school. But well over 100 students willingly donned them recently because they knew they were about to do something important.

The Fox Chapel Middle School students were participating in Feeding Children Everywhere, filling 17,088 bags with 51,264 meals — three meals per bag — to be distributed locally.

Feeding Children Everywhere is an Orlando-based nonprofit organization dedicated to feeding those in need. Coordinator Amanda Weber came to Fox Chapel to help with the assembly lines and explain the organization.

"We are a social charity that empowers and mobilizes people to assemble healthy meals for hungry children," Weber said. "Our meals cost 25 cents to make. We travel all over the United States, and this year we were contracted to go overseas."

The 25 cents covers supplies, the food, travel and the Feeding Children Everywhere employees. Ninety-four cents of every dollar goes into feeding people, Weber said.

"We believe in feeding hungry kids," she said.

The organization is mostly funded by corporate sponsors that host food-bagging events and supply the volunteers and raise money to cover the number of meals they wish to package and distribute. It is more an exception than the rule for a school to do this, but the 50,000-plus meals at Fox Chapel, which cost more than $12,000, were funded by the J.P. Morgan Foundation.

Rows of tables lined the Fox Chapel gymnasium and were set up with everything needed to package the food. Each table had four plastic bins. One held lentils, another had rice; a third had dried vegetables, and the fourth held Himalayan sea salt.

The children lined up and were given specific jobs, such as scooping out food, placing bags under the funnels, weighing the meals and skimming off excess, sealing the bags and placing them in boxes — 96 meals to a box.

The students were led by the school's Lighthouse Kids, students designated as leaders, and this was considered a community service project. Eighth-grader Daniela Rosero, 13, and her classmate, Monique Steenkamp, 14, were two such leaders.

They started their groups off with hand-sanitizing and putting on gloves, "so everything's clean and not full of germs," Monique said.

They were participating in the project, she said, "just to help out and make a difference. Kids that aren't able to eat and get food are going to be able to eat and be able to think about more important things, like their futures."

Fox Chapel principal Ray Pinder said that all of the food the children packaged that day would stay in the county. Some of the children doing the packaging might even be recipients.

"Eighty-four percent of our kids are on free or reduced-price lunch," Pinder said.

He also liked the idea of getting the students involved in the community.

"It gives them the idea that 'I can have an impact on my own community.' To me that's a very powerful message," he said.

When the children entered the gymnasium, hairnets in place, Weber greeted them and told them there are hungry people in Hernando County.

"You are making a really big difference," she said.

That is a message she often repeats.

"We believe that the people who package the meals are just as important as the people receiving the meals. Every person matters. Every person can help make a difference," she said.

Missy Wyzykowski, Fox Chapel's Title I parent coordinator, was delighted to witness the students working together, grouped randomly.

"This is the coolest thing ever," Wyzykowski said. "I'm so excited we were able to do this."