A fast-growing program that benefits hungry students in need is poised to grow even further with the addition of a dedicated building for preparing and housing hundreds of meals for Fredericton youth.
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The Student Hunger Program has been operating for several years with more schools joining in all the time.
Currently, 18 Fredericton area schools are involved, however, preparing meals for the hundreds in need was a difficult task even with the strong contingent of volunteers.
That challenge will now be an easier one to tackle as now the program has its own building to operate out of, a state-of-the-art kitchen and assembly facility complete with plenty of storage.
“We’ve come a long way,” said Feed the Lions student adviser Kim MacDonald.
“When we first started, we had absolutely nothing,” she explained. “We have a little lunch program room that was a closet without electricity, without running water.”
Support, both in volunteers as well as sponsors, has been strong from the beginning and continues to grow.
With that growth, the need to have a dedicated space for the program only became greater, and those same determined volunteers sprang into action.
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“We were surprised by the extent of need in our small town,” explained Sandy Kitchen-Brewer, a volunteer who started with the program after a request from her daughter.
After helping to bag over 400 lunches her first day, Sandy and her husband Earl decided they wanted to help in an even bigger way and went to the committee to see what could be done.
“They said they needed space so we put our heads together and came up with this building concept,” she explained. “Everything is new… the students can come across when it’s their day to volunteer and then the food goes directly back over to the school.”
Situated just outside Leo Hayes’ front doors makes for easy access for the dozens of student volunteers in the school who help not only their own classmates, but students they don’t even know as well.
“The van shows up, that gets loaded and the coolers get sent off to the other schools in the program,” explained Kitchen-Brewer.
Recent graduate Armond Richardson was involved in the program during his time in high school.
During the ceremony, he spoke to the crowd and indicated he didn’t think he’d be there if it weren’t for the program that ensured he was fed every day.
He’s thrilled that even more students stand to benefit from the Student Hunger Program as it goes on.
“I’m happy that the organization is growing and that more people are acting fast,” he said.
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