Photo by Eric Taunton.
Youth group members pack bags of food and snacks for food insecure children at Episcopal Church of the Ascension.
The Outreach Committee at Episcopal Church of the Ascension is addressing a serious need for some students in the community: hunger.
The committee is currently supporting a total of 16 students at Vestavia Hills Elementary East and Cahaba Heights Elementary by having school counselors discreetly put bags of food in their backpacks once a week.
“While we are in a wealthy part of town, there are still people who live in poverty and are hungry,” said Jack Alvey, rector at Episcopal Church of the Ascension.
Alvey got the idea for the program while attending a Leadership Vestavia Hills meeting, he said. Members were discussing different ways to address hunger in the community and one of those solutions was partnering with local schools to identify children that are food insecure, Alvey said.
“Leadership Vestavia Hills didn’t feel like it had the bandwidth to run the program,” Alvey said. “I just carried that idea with me to an outreach meeting at Ascension and the leadership team loved it and just ran with it.”
The program started as a trial-run for the last nine weeks of school for the year, said Anna Colvin, member of the Outreach Committee at Episcopal Church of the Ascension.
The committee worked with counselors to identify food insecure students through questionnaire forms as well as using a little intuition, Colvin said.
“The counselors already had an idea in their heads of who would be a good fit for that,” Colvin said. “They have kids that come and ask for snacks every single day so they already knew some that would be a good fit for the program.”
The money for the program was raised through the church’s Food Truck Festival which brought in $5,000, Colvin said.
“We had a huge community turnout,” Colvin said. “We had over 500 people and it was mostly people in the area that came. It was a great way to come together as a community and that’s how we’re paying for this program.”
The committee provides students with nine food items in non see-through bags, she said, such as a protein drink that doesn’t require refrigeration, Chef Boyardee canned meals, mac and cheese, peanut butter crackers, beef jerky, a protein bar, a breakfast bar, trail mix and applesauce.
The committee then delivers the bags of food to the front office of the schools, Colvin said. Counselors then take the bags and discreetly put them in the students' backpacks when classrooms are empty so they aren’t embarrassed, she said.
Colvin said the committee will also send home multiple bags if a food insecure student has a sibling.
She said the schools have expressed appreciation for the program and have even given the committee tips on how to better serve the students. For instance, the schools had suggestions on how certain items should be packaged. “So far it’s been very well received,” Colvin said.
“It’s unfortunate, obviously, that there’s a need but we’re glad that we’re able to fill that need,” Colvin said. “Our goal is to be in every school and really involve the community…We’re also working with the counselor at Dolly Ridge (Elementary) to involve them as well.”
