At Kids’ Food Basket, we believe that healthy food access should be a right to every child.
Healthy food is powerful and has the ability to shape lives if it is consistently available and barrier free.
However, that goal is not yet a reality. We depend on our community and the strength and optimism of our neighbors to help us take steps forward in realizing our goal.
And while we have thousands of amazing and generous volunteers who every single day show up for our collective community, one demographic of volunteers that we continue to see growth and determination towards the mission is young adults.
Young adults inspire.
They want change, but better yet work hard to make change.
Young adults see hope for the future.
Young adults, like Avery Rant.
A 12th grade student at Grand Haven High School, Avery started a community service project in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day where she asked her city to donate healthy food to make Supper Packs for Kids’ Food Basket. With drop off locations at the Grand Haven City Hall and all of the Grand Haven elementary schools and intermediate schools, she collected enough food to create 480 Supper Packs as well as 1,382 decorated bags.
We talked with Avery about her project and what inspired her to give back to her community:
What is your school group and why did you get involved?
“The group that I am involved in is called the Human Relations Commission (HRC) and it is a part of the city of Grand Haven. This group’s mission is to create an equal and diverse community. I joined this group because I am able to have a direct impact in my community and I can have a say in what is going on. As a young adult who will soon be going into the world to make an impact, I wanted to get involved very early on so I can understand what is happening, what I need to do or what I need to try to do to make my world a better place.
The members of my HRC board are some of the best people I have met. They are willing to help me in my endeavor to create these projects. I can not thank them enough. This is such a good way to make an impact, even though I am just a teenager in high school.
Why did you decide to dedicate your project to Kids’ Food Basket?
“I have decided to dedicate my project to Kids’ Food Basket because I have seen how my peers are in need of food support. For example, when I was in eighth grade, I opened my locker and I had received a Sack Supper by mistake. I brought it to my school’s office to make sure it would go to the right person. They pulled out a huge, long list of names of students who went to my school who received Sack Suppers. It was astonishing to me that there were so many kids who were going through food insecurity, that I didn’t even know about. That stuck with me for a very long time.
It is such a silent epidemic.
I have always known that this issue needs to be faced head on and I want to do something about it. It wasn’t until last year when one of my clubs in track started to do volunteer outings with Kids’ Food Basket that I could see myself helping them in the future. And because of this incident and so many others, where I have seen how much my community supports kids with food insecurity, that I come to really love helping the organization. I am so glad that I could help Kids’ Food Basket out by running this project with collecting food and decorating bags so that kids could have a boost throughout their day.”
Why is it important to you that children have access to healthy food?
“It is important to me that kids have access to nutritional food because whatever they eat or do now will impact them in the future. If kids are eating healthy and nutritious food now, they learn what is nutritional and what they should be putting into their bodies, and therefore they will do that as adults. They will grow up and be healthy adults with healthy eating habits. And now, if kids are food insecure, they won’t grow up like that. By providing Supper Packs, we can make sure that kids are learning what are healthy habits and how they can do this for themselves in the future. Additionally, if kids are eating more healthy food, they will have more motivation, they will feel better, which could help them to be able to go out and be athletic or do better in school, which is always a plus.”
Why should young adults get involved with helping the community?
“I think young adults should get involved with volunteering because we are going to be inheriting this community and this world very soon. It is important that right now, it is the time that we decide to step up and say ‘I want to make an impact!’
We have room for error now. We can see what we want to help, who we want to help, how we want to do it and how much effort we want to put into it – because we can do it! We have determination, we have the motivation to do it. And since we know that whatever we do now will make our lives better and will make other people’s lives better as well, this will only motivate us more. And that is the greatest thing about young adults – we can see a future that is better and because of that we are so much stronger to go out and make it happen.
By volunteering, young adults will see that we are so much more connected than we think. We also have so much love and support from everyone that by volunteering, we can really spread it, spread the wealth and make this world an amazing place!”
