Food For Our Children Week looks to stamp out hunger

SANDPOINT — It’s Food For Our Children Week in Bonner County and the timing couldn’t be any better, what with three grocery stores jumping on board to help raise money and the news that the weekend food program is about to be extended to include students at the middle school.

Through Oct. 10, customers at Yoke’s, Super 1 Foods and Winter Ridge Natural Foods can pick up a well-marked $5 Food For Our Children bag in the store, take it to the checkout counter and guarantee that a child will have something to eat between the end of one school week and the start of another.

The bags are actually empty — more of a graphic illustration doubling as a fundraising vehicle — but the money they raise this week will help fill the stomach of a hungry kid.

Bonner Community Food Bank has administered the weekend food program at elementary schools for years — an outreach that historically was called the “backpack program” and one that continues to favorably affect the lives of students from lower-income households.

As of this week, that successful effort has been given a boost compliments of a large donation from Bonner General Health, which ponied up $25,000 to expand the weekend food program to Sandpoint Middle School.

“There certainly is a need,” said SMS Principal Casey McLaughlin, adding that youngsters don’t escape the circumstances that cause hunger just because they make the move up from elementary school. “They’re still in a spot where they need help, they just choose to quietly not make an issue of it once they reach middle school.”

According to Food For Our Children founder Dennis Pence, the outreach now touches all but two elementary schools in Lake Pend Oreille School District, as well as serving Sandpoint Head Start, Lake Pend Oreille High School and, now, SMS.

Last year, weekend food was distributed to 170 students in the district — a number that has jumped by more than 300 percent as the 2015-16 school year gets underway.

“With the support we’ve received publicly, we’ve been able to help an additional 415 children,” said Pence. “While this is fantastic news, we have still not been able to fulfill our opportunity to provide weekend food for all children in our school district who need it.

“Our goal is that no child in Bonner County is hungry.”

Pence estimates that as many as 800 students in the district — many of whom already receive weekday support through the free- and reduced-lunch program — could benefit from this weekend bridge strategy to provide them with nutrition. Now that Food For Our Children has reached into middle school territory to take on hunger there, the caloric intake for kids of that age needs to be higher than that of younger students, the founder said.

To make that transition smoothly, Pence and his board of directors decided to model the SMS extension on a similar program administered by volunteers at Newport Hospital & Health Services in Newport, Wash.

His overture to Bonner General Health to follow suit in Bonner County was met with enthusiasm — and a check that got the program off the ground. According to Pence, BGH is not competition for the food bank’s ongoing work in the schools, it is simply a new partner in what has now become a larger picture.

“The food bank has been a fantastic partner and they continue to provide weekend food for the elementary kids,” Pence said. “They’ve also provided us with the historical expertise and compassion to understand the need more than we would have been able to do otherwise.”

Misty Robertson, chief nursing officer for BGH, will act as the liaison between the hospital and the middle school, while SMS bookkeeper Tammy Voelz will coordinate food distribution on site by having the bags staged and ready to take home. According to McLaughlin, the middle school plans to keep things low profile, allowing students to opt in and discretely pick up their own food on Fridays at the end of the school day.

“The last thing we want is for students not to take it because they feel there’s a stigma attached,” the principal said.

In another example of perfect timing, Food For Our Children approached BGH not long after the hospital had conducted a community needs assessment as part of creating an inventory of things it could help address.

“When Dennis came and spoke to us, it seemed like such a good fit for Bonner General Health,” said BGH chief executive officer Sheryl Rickard. “We were excited about being involved.”

Just a little more than six months after being formed, Food For Our Children has made big strides toward its goal of eradicating childhood hunger in Bonner County, but there is much left to do, the founder said. Another 200 students remain unserved in LPOSD and the group would like to carry the program countywide to include the West Bonner County School District as soon as funding allows.

Food For Our Children was lucky, Pence said, because it was able to partner with “already well-functioning entities” such as the food bank, the school district and BGH, which provide expertise and implementation while his organization supplies the funding that lets the program continue to grow. Every dollar donated to the cause goes directly to providing food for kids, the founder stressed, noting that Food For Our Children does not take a penny out for administrative fees or other costs associated with the program.

It’s an approach that has turned heads and quickly gained favor in the community, including attracting two new board members in Barbara Buchanan and Michele Murphree, as well as a stream of individual and organizational donations, most recently in the form of a check from the Rotary Club of Sandpoint.

“We’ve received donations of all sizes,” said Pence. “And while we’ve seen great generosity, the need is much larger than anyone realized.”

Which is why the group opted to team up with the three local grocers and make this week part of a grassroots campaign to throw the community’s collective shoulder to the wheel.

“Food For Our Children Week is kind of our coming out party, thanks to the support of our local supermarkets,” Pence said.