A little friendly rivalry is taking place for a great cause this week. Local elementary schools are competing to see who can collect the most food to help stock the End 68 Hours of Hunger pantry.
Winners get local bragging rights, though the real winners are the more than 170 K-6 students whom the organization supports each week.
“It’s going to be a lot of fun, we’re all pumped,” said Mandy McDonald, in her 17th year as family support liaison at Conway Elementary School.
McDonald brought the End 68 Hours program to Conway in 2014 after it was started by Claire Bloom, a retired naval officer, in Dover in 2011.
“This program puts nourishing food in the hands of elementary schoolchildren to carry them through the weekend,” McDonald said in an interview last Thursday.
The food is purchased and packed into bags by volunteers, then delivered to the offices of the elementary schools. The students take the bags home on Friday afternoon. The cycle starts again, every week.
When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived 13 months ago, McDonald said she wasn’t sure how things were going to work but was “absolutely determined” that kids would still receive their take-home bags each week.
“We were kind of in panic mode at first,” she said. “We had to be a little creative and flexible, but there was never a lapse.”
McDonald said some items became difficult to get from the big-box stores. Working with Dave Watson at U.S. Foods, McDonald has been able to keep filling the bags, but has been low on such items as macaroni and cheese, canned soup, ravioli and ramen noodles along with canned chicken and tuna.
Due to that issue, “every week, my mom (Gail Jones, an aide at Conway Elementary) and I go shop for these items,” McDonald said.
In addition, for the next couple weeks, from April 12-23, “the local schools in SAU 9 and 13, as well as Robert Frost Charter School and Children Unlimited, will be having a friendly competition to see who can collect the most food for our program,” she said.
In a program that started in 2014 with 20 bags, “COVID has made the demand even greater,” said McDonald. “We were hovering at around 145 kiddos before the pandemic, and now we’re at 170.” Staffed by a team of more than 30 volunteers, 100% of the money raised goes toward the program.
“Our community is amazing,” McDonald added. “How can anyone argue with feeding kids?”
After reaching out to areas for a helping hand, and “everyone said ‘YES,’ immediately.”
Kennett High School is collecting cans of soup and ravioli; Kennett Middle has created an internal competition among its three education teams, with Team I gathering packets of ramen noodles, Team II boxes of mac-and-cheese and Team III seeking cans of tuna and chicken.
Madison Elementary, Freedom Elementary and Pine Tree School in Center Conway are collecting soups and ravioli; John H. Fuller Elementary in North Conway and Children Unlimited, canned tuna and chicken; Josiah Bartlett Elementary, Jackson Grammar and Conway Elementary, mac and cheese; and Robert Frost Charter School, Ramen noodles.
“I just ran into Kevin (Richard, superintendent for SAU 9), and he said, ‘Add us to the competition,’ ” McDonald said. “They will be collecting canned veggies for the food drive, which is wonderful.”
Middle school teacher Kim Livingston and Team I are off to a strong start. She posted a photo of a shopping cart brimming over on Facebook on Thursday, saying, “Check out this friendly competition between our local schools to help out the amazing End 68 Hours of Hunger! KMS Team 1 Families and Friends — we are collecting ramen! Our goal is to build our very own House of Ramen (thanks for the idea, Reed Van Rossum) out of what we collect.”
The End 68 Hours of Hunger website states: “Childhood hunger — or food insecurity — is a national problem It occurs when children receive insufficient food regularly and, in many cases, missing meals entirely. After a while, these children also experience ‘fear of hunger’ that affects their behavior as much as physical hunger affects their bodies.”
It adds that “teachers tell us that on Friday afternoons the children who are unlikely to have enough food at home become very edgy and are unable to concentrate. After a week in a structured environment where they have at least two full meals, they will leave school and for 68 hours have little to eat.
“That insecurity can lead to some behavioral disruptions. On Monday mornings they return to school ill, often spending the day in the nurse’s office. They are unable to focus and concentrate until they once again are nourished.”
Thanks to the bags of food that go home with these children, that cycle of malnutrition has been disrupted. It’s not just the school district that gets involved. Members of the Journey Church help pack more than 170 bags twice a month, while Altrusa International of Carroll County and the Unitarian Universalist Church each pack once a month, while a team from Cranmore Mountain Resort fills in when needed.
The food is stored in an empty classroom in the Professional Development Center at SAU 9.
Each bag has between $8-$10 of food in it, including no less than 3,200 calories of food per child.
McDonald said the weekend package gives each child in the program a can of tuna or chicken; two cans of soup or ravioli; either peanut butter and jelly or tuna (sandwiches); Ramen noodles; a sleeve of saltine crackers; peanut butter crackers; two granola bars and cereal. Pasta and sauce also are included when possible.
“It’s one bag per kid,” McDonald said. “If there are three kids in a family, it’s three bags that go home.”
Aside from food for K-6 students, food pantries were created at Kennett Middle and Kennett High for any student to access.
Asked if seven years ago, she would have envisioned feeding 170 students each week, McDonald quickly said no. “It just proves how great the need is,” she said, but added, “I pinch myself every day when I think about how supportive our community is.”
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