Community Chat

[feline groovy]

never assume that kids are fully provided for  

Indiana school district turns unused cafeteria food into take-home meals for students who may not get enough to eat at the weekends

• Elkhart School District announced Friday that they will now work with Cultivate 
• Cultivate is a nonprofit that 'rescues food, packages meals and serves meals'
• Twenty students at Woodland Elementary will receive meals for the weekend 

DailyMail.co.UK

PUBLISHED: 12:19 EDT, 3 April 2019 | UPDATED: 13:18 EDT, 3 April 2019

An Indiana school district will turn unused cafeteria food into take-home meals for students who are in need thanks to a partnership with a local nonprofit organization.

The Elkhart School District announced on Friday that they will now be working with Cultivate, a non-profit group that 'rescues food, packages meals and serves meals to people who are food insecure'.  

At Woodland Elementary, 20 students will go home each Friday with meals for the weekend. 

This service will be provided until the end of the school year. 

Administrators said the students were identified by staffers at the elementary school. 

According to a statement from the district, Cultivate will rescue the unused food within the Elkhart Community Schools district to provide the meals. 

Cultivate's president, Jim Conklin, explained to WSBT how the process works: 'Mostly, we rescue food that’s been made but never served by catering companies, large food service businesses, like the school system.'

'You don't always think of a school,' he added.

The district said in the statement that Cultivate's 'process has been reviewed and approved by the Elkhart County Health Department and Indiana Department of Education, and meets strict criteria to ensure safe food handling for students'.

Natalie Bickel, who works for the school district's student services department, told WSBT that they identified the need after they noticed they were wasting a lot of cafeteria food. 

But through the partnership with Cultivate, food will be salvaged by volunteers of the organization three times a week. 

Cultivate has been in place in St Joseph County since 2017. 

The idea to bring Cultivate's program to Elkhart came from a group of participants in the Greater Elkhart Chamber of Commerce Leadership Academy, a nine-month program whose mission is to promote servant leadership through an awareness program combining key community issues and enhanced leadership skill development to advance community stewardship.

[dex]

@feline groovy @The problem is that some kids don’t care for the healthy food choices and that is why a lot of the food is left.I regularly come across fruit on the side of the road after the kids get out of school.I pick up some of it to feed to the goats I treat but they don’t seem to care for it either.The goats prefer baby cookies.

[happycat]

This is great to see.

I have noticed a lot of similar things where I live. Its hard to imagine that so any could be in need, but I believe they are. We have no idea how anyone else is living. I hate thinking of children going hungry.

[millieshops]

@dexI agree that "some" kids reject some food, but if we wait for the perfect solution to the food insecurity of some kids, we'll never find a solution.

I think the best need for food was brought home to me during my very first year of teaching when I heard one eighth grader watch the sky and wish we'd have a snow day.  Pretty much agreed upon except for the one classmate who didn't agree, :saying  "Lunch is the only hot meal I ever get."  That shut up the whole room, but he had just taught me a very valuable lesson because even though I'd grown up poor, I was never that poor.

I applaud that school district for trying to help.  There will be some kids who accept.

[Sooner]

I think programs like that should not be handled through schools.  Teachers are not trained, they have no way to really identify need and I think that when teachers and education in general is in dire lack of funding, this should be done through established agencies that deal with need and are staffed and trained to do it.

I think it is wonderful that unused food goes to those in need. But I think it should be done in a fair way--and I don't think schools are able to assess read need.  You would not have social services folks teach. . . 

[cherry]

Bread for the World deals with food insolvency  and treats everyone the same. If any of you are interested.

[millieshops]

@SoonerOn a guess, these foods are going to kids who are already on free or reduced priced lunches.  Where I taught, the teachers were not involved in making those decisions.  Various agencies in and out of the schools were.

[chrystaltree]

Food insecurity....LOL   Let's just use real words and call them families in need.  It's a great idea, we waste too much food in this country and there are too many hungry people in this country.  There's a  program that I like locally.  They package and wrap all the leftover meals from the lunchroom along with fruit and set it out on tables for the kids to take as they are leaving school.  There's no stigma attached because it's not just for needy students.  Any student can take as much as they want; so, need kids can take enough for their siblings or breakfast the next day.  But, they find that the kids on sports teams are taking food and kids who go home to an empty house can take something home for an afternoon snack, rather than the chips and candy they would eat.  It worked in ways they had not thought of. 

[dex]

@millieshops @I really think the problem is not only being poor...it is that a lot of parents don’t cook.I grew up really poor but we always had food.My mom made oatmeal everyday..yuck but that is what we could afford.She baked bread and we usually had a thin layer of peanut butter on that with half an apple or orange for lunch.Dinner was mostly veg with a little meat in an old pressure cooker.My mom worked and was a single mom so she didn’t have a lot of time for meal prep but in those days if you didn’t look out for yourself you were in trouble.We were never hungry but I would say that we didn’t have anything fancy to eat.I think the schools should teach simple cooking and meal planning.My son says most of his friends don’t cook and spend so much money eating out or picking up fast food that they are always complaining they are short of money.He tries to get them to add it up for a week and then the next week go to the grocery store with that same money and see how much food they can purchase.

[Cakers3]

It's a shame that any child and the child's family does not have enough to eat.

These programs are helping but the iceberg dips much deeper regarding this issue.

I agree that parents are busy working, don't have time to cook, fast food is a family dinner now where before it was a treat.

Food banks tend to run out of food or at least end up with severed shortages once the holidays have passed.

No wonder we have such an increase in behavioral problems in young children; the lack of proper nutrition is key for them.

And it's only going to get worse-when families cannot afford to feed their children and depend upon food banks, churches, and schools-the problem will affect all of us.