Director's Blog - Guest Blog: Snow Day

posted on Feb 11th 2010 at 12:00am by Christine Lentine

Guest blog written by Christine Lentine.  Christine joined Kids’ Food Basket on February 1 as the Fund Development and Community Outreach Coordinator.  She previously was involved at KFB as a facilitator.

Yesterday (2/10/10) many GRPS and area schools were closed for a snow day.  I remember being a kid and the excitement that came with school being closed.  That usually meant sleeping in, lots of cartoons to watch, a big bowl of creamy macaroni and cheese for lunch, fresh snow to make forts with the neighbor kids, and a hot chocolate and cookie break mid afternoon. Snow days were great!  
This past snow day did not leave me with that same warm fuzzy feeling of my childhood.  Kids’ Food Basket distributes sack suppers through the schools, so when the schools are shut down, we cannot deliver the meals.  Throughout the day I kept thinking about the fact these kids weren’t getting breakfast and lunch at school, and they weren’t getting dinner from us.  Share Our Strength’s most recent facts state that 17 million children in America don’t have access to enough healthy food to thrive.  Today 2,345 of our community's kids were not a part of that statistic.  At a cost of just 90 cents a piece YOU made that happen.  Yesterday, we couldn’t.  It made me realize how grateful I am for the relationship that we have with our schools to be able to distribute meals through them.  It made me grateful for today, when I know that 2,345 little tummies within a 15 mile radius of where I’m sitting right now will be filled this morning, afternoon and thanks to you, this evening.  This morning there is a great buzz of bags crinkling and people chatting here at Kids' Food Basket.  Our incredible volunteers are at it again!  Sometimes I like the quiet to work, but today I could not be more pleased at the buzz that’s going on.