Advertisement

Food For Thought: Breakfast program continues to need help feeding school kids

Click to play video: 'Food For Thought: Breakfast program continues to need help feeding school kids'
Food For Thought: Breakfast program continues to need help feeding school kids
Food For Thought: Breakfast program continues to need help feeding school kids – Nov 2, 2020

Every Monday and Tuesday during the school year, an army of volunteers from Food for Thought is on the front lines battling hunger in schools at Kelowna’s New Life Centre.

“Today we are packaging 3,000 breakfasts for the children within School District 23 who are at risk of food insecurity,” Cheryl Hoffman, Food for Thought’s program co-ordinator, told Global News.

Food for Thought, a charity that’s part of Hope for the Nations, has helped feed hungry school kids in the central Okanagan since 2009.

“A hungry student is not equipped to learn and it’s imperative to the success of a child to have healthy food,” Hoffman said.

Food for Thought estimates that there are almost 5,900 children who live in food-insecure homes in the central Okanagan.

Story continues below advertisement

Every day, Hoffman and her volunteers help feed 600 of them by supplying 30 schools in Lake Country, Kelowna and West Kelowna with their breakfast program.

For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen.

Get breaking National news

For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen.
By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.
“We also do a backpack program that helps children have healthy meals when they are not at school because as we know, hunger does not take the weekend off,” Hoffman said.
 
Click to play video: 'Food for Thought backpack program'
Food for Thought backpack program
But Food for Thought continues to need help in order to ensure that kids don’t go to school on an empty stomach.
“If you gave $30 that would feed a child for a month,” Hoffman said. Peter Boyd, the owner-operator of Peter’s Your Independent Grocer, is an ardent supporter of Food for Thought.“We need everyone’s support,” said Boyd.For Boyd, the program is an investment in the future. That’s why donates so much food from his store to the program.
Click to play video: 'All publicly funded school boards will have access to Alberta school meal program'
All publicly funded school boards will have access to Alberta school meal program

“How can we expect our children to be our future leaders if we don’t feed them?” Boyd said. 

Story continues below advertisement

Hoffman agrees, adding that with just a small donation, the program can see a big payoff.

“We have seen children because of our program improve their academic performance, make better relationships, their behaviour has improved — this is helping so many children in our community,” Hoffman said.  

If you would like to donate, you can go to hopeforthenations.com and click on the Food for Thought donate button.

Sponsored content

AdChoices