Second Harvest, churches team up to feed schoolchildren through weekends

When Sheila Grose was growing up, she would have loved to have a pack of canned ravioli, boxed milk and dried fruit and nuts to eat on the weekend.

“We didn’t have a lot of food growing up,” said the Kennewick mom, who was raised by a single parent. “Something like this would have been great,” she added as she put kid-friendly food items into a small bag Wednesday.

Her church, The Garden, is one of four working with Second Harvest to provide hundreds of food packs to low-income students at four Tri-City schools beginning this Friday through the program Bite 2 Go.

The packs, discreetly slipped into student backpacks, are meant to give kids a few meals and snacks on the weekends before they return to school on Mondays.

The program is starting off small, and Second Harvest is looking for more sponsors. However, officials said it could end up having a big effect on children, helping them be more successful in school and potentially break out of poverty.

“I believe the community will embrace this program,” said Jean Tucker, development director for the emergency food relief distributor.

Bite 2 Go started in Second Harvest’s home base of Spokane. The program was so well received, Second Harvest expanded it to the Tri-Cities.

Shalom United Church of Christ in Richland, Crossview Community Church in Pasco and the Ford Focus on Child Hunger Foundation are among the other groups, along with The Garden, acting as initial sponsors.

They will distribute a little more than 100 food packs to students in need at Vista Elementary in Kennewick, Richland’s Marcus Whitman and Jefferson elementary schools and Pasco’s Maya Angelou Elementary. Half to three quarters of students at those schools receive free or reduced price meals because of their families’ financial status.

Tucker said the packs will be kid-friendly, meaning they won’t require any cooking or refrigeration and will be easy to open.

Schools receive permission from parents before sending the food home with children. Distribution efforts will focus on getting them to the kids most in need, but without drawing attention to them.

Bite 2 Go isn’t The Garden’s only food-based outreach to Vista Elementary. The church also sponsors regular visits from Second Harvest’s mobile food pantry, which serves up to 170 families, parishioner Lynette Brightman said. But the church knew it could do more.

“There’s just a lot of kids who go home each weekend without food,” she said.

While more food packs are expected to be provided in coming weeks as more parent permission slips are returned, organizers said they are looking for more to help with the effort.

Each food pack costs $4, and the annual expense for one student is $144. Sponsors are being asked to make a three-year commitment to ensure the program has stability, Tucker said.

But there’s a lot of optimism around the effort. Grose’s two sons helped her pack up the food kits for distribution and they, too, have been through tough times. For their family, it’s one way of helping make sure others don’t ever go hungry.

This story was originally published March 4, 2015 at 6:10 PM with the headline "Second Harvest, churches team up to feed schoolchildren through weekends."