Friends,
We need your help.
As some of you may know, last winter BCS was the fortunate recipient of St. Michaels’ College Fix it With Five award - $10,000 to fund a year’s worth of our amazing Take Home Bag Project.
Our Take Home Bag project, in case you don’t know, started 4 years ago when we packed up bags of grocery staples for families before we closed for the long break between Christmas and New Year’s Day. We know many of the families we work with are food insecure, meaning they can't always rely on adequate daily nutritous food. We wanted to provide extra food for the days kids would be away from the daily breakfast, lunch and snack served at school, and also encourage families to cook and eat together with healthy ingredients like eggs, cheese, pasta, tortillas, butter, oatmeal, veggies, and fruit. We packed up 15 and sent them home.
We surveyed folks who took those first bags to find out what they thought. The response was so overwhelming - the gratitude for the simple bag with recipe ideas and the openness of the answers to questions about food insecurity made us realize we were on to something. We knew we had to find a way to continue the project.
Over the next four years we wrote fundraising letters, we formed a relay team and ran the marathon - twice - and we received support from the Children's Trust Fund. Last year, St. Mike’s students were moved by one of our core beliefs, and one the main ideas behind the bag project. Chronic hunger erodes human dignity. But sharing healthy food can restore it. We will always be grateful for their support.
After all, as one of our preschoolers put it, who can learn when they are hungry?
Here are some things our families have had to say through their surveys over the years:
My kids didn't like spinach until this meal!
"I'm just seeing what's in my food bag" yells one kid from the kitchen. It takes me .075 seconds to get through the door and there she is, a fist full of shredded cheese in her mouth and another headed that way. "Cheese!" she yells. "There's cheese in here!!"
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The bag was helpful, my niece was visiting for the weekend so it was great to have the extra food.
Thanks for reminding us that tacos are tasty and cheap, we never think to make them!
Grilled cheese and soup! How come you always forget how good it tastes?
Bags are always so helpful! Love that you get enough for a meal plus extras.
We really enjoyed the curry, rice, spinach salad, and bread with butter, so much to eat!
Food is not cheap so even one meal makes a world of difference for me and my family.
We hit Friday like a brick wall- tired hungry and disorganized- so coming home with a bag of dinner invites us to slow down, work together, and feed ourselves. Thanks!
The games, songs and food bags from BCS have helped me and my child bond. We have more opportunities to talk, play, and spend quality time together because of BCS.
It was great. I had never made meatless chili before. My family ate almost all of it. We only ended up saving one bowl for leftovers.
Lasagna is something we don’t have normally due to the amount of different ingredients one has to purchase. I had enough to make two dinners with leftovers.
It was easy and came out amazing ( vegetable curry). I was pleasantly surprised when my picky 13 year old son actually like it. I thought he was going to take the first bite and quit. He ate half a large bowl.
We absolutely oved the potatoes and fresh dill. We used the eggs to for scrambled egg breakfast. We used the bread for PB and J sandwiches.
I hope to be able to contribute when I can. But it helps the family out so much.
I want to say thank you.
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We spent the St. Mike's money this past year, feeding folks, spreading cooking knowledge and helping families cook and eat together more. To prepare for the end of this money, we applied for another year's worth of take home bag funding from Hannaford's community giving program. We felt sure we would get it. After all, we're a local non-profit, our program addresses hunger in our community, and promotes family nutrition. Plus, we've purchased the contents of each and every bag - as well as much of our lunch and snack ingredients - from Hannaford.
Needless to say, we were hopelessly unprepared for our rejection.
We are reapplying through a different Hannaford program, thanks to a suggestion in our reply letter, but unfortunately at this moment we have only two more weeks of take home bags, until we can secure another funding stream.
We know this program is valuable. We know we can keep it going, because we've done it before when it seemed impossible - remember the marathon!
And right now more than ever, fighting for something we know benefits our community and affirms our need to care for each other seems absolutely essential.
While we work on our next steps, we are open to ideas, suggestions for organizations we could ask for support, and of course, donations.
If you'd like to help, I've started this gofundme page to make donating super easy and quick.
Click the link to donate, and help us feed our families.
Thank you.
We love you.
We're in this together.
Erinn and Sarah.
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