Sunnyvale Community Services has teamed up with Second Harvest Food Bank, Kaiser Permanente and the Sunnyvale School District to kick off its new weekend food program.
The pilot program is targeted at more than 140 low-income children and their families who struggle to afford food when students are home for meals on weekends.
Many children receive two to three meals from programs at schools on the weekdays, but weekends have been left entirely up to the family until now.
SSD superintendent Benjamin Picard said the program has been developing for a while.
“Over time we have become concerned about nutrition over weekends and holidays, and we’ve been discussing providing extra nutritious food to bridge any gaps in child nutrition that may exist in some areas of our community,” he said.
The first distribution of food took place at San Miguel Elementary School on March 6. Distribution will begin at Vargas Elementary in a couple of weeks.
Carrying the food and aiding in the distribution is a large van donated by Second Harvest, repaired by Kuykendall’s Auto and Collision and funded by Kaiser Permanente.
Carolyn Alexander, director of operations for Sunnyvale Community Services, said that students will typically receive a grocery bag containing staple items like rice, fruits and vegetables, as well as some snack foods such as string cheese or crackers.
“We’re going to want to give kid-friendly fruit, as well as some easy-to-cook vegetables,” she said.
The food is given out on Fridays to children that participate in the Kids Learning After School program.
In a survey of elementary school students who participate in KLAS at San Miguel Elementary and Vargas Elementary, 29 percent of children at San Miguel and 25 percent of children at Vargas said that they are “hungry a lot” at home.
The same survey showed that 24 percent of students at Vargas and 21 percent of students at San Miguel “worry a lot” that food in their homes will run out before their families have money to buy more.
According to Alexander, Sunnyvale is home to at least four Title I schools, which means that many students at these schools need assistance in affording food at school.
“Historically, 40 percent or more of Sunnyvale school kids qualify for free or reduced price lunch,” Alexander said.
Because it is a pilot program, distribution of food will only continue until the end of the school year in June. After that, regular summer food programs take over. It will be decided later whether the pilot program can continue in the next academic year. This depends partly on funding but more so on helping hands, according to Alexander.
“I have no doubt that we could find the food,” she said. “It’s the volunteers and the logistics of getting it from our warehouse to the schools. We’d need another 25 volunteers every Friday.”
For now, though, only an additional five or so volunteers are needed for to help out with the program for the remainder of the school year.
For more information about the food programs in Sunnyvale, visit svcommunityservices.org.
