For the average suburban middle class family Mid May can mean beginning a routine of weekly new fun adventures for the children , a summer vacation for a week, trips to the mountains, and many other special ways to be entertained and enjoy summer. Raise your hand if that’s your family ?
Since we believe in serving, sharing and loving at Jeffco Eats we would like you to join us in doing something to help our neighbors. The 42% comes from not having free and reduced breakfast or lunch each week. If we eat 21 meals a week and we lose 10 that is 42 % bye bye, gone. No more free and no more reduced breakfast and lunch meals. No teachers to give you snack bars or a friend to share their lunch with you.
Starting in March, we are going to ask for many community groups to have helpful tips for our less fortunate neighbors on being able to survive this deeper hunger horror. The baseline to think about is a family of four living on $30k and that is a life of trauma. So to make more healthy decisions takes more effort and more forethought. Here is how we can help:
Start a campaign at your local school to add tips each week starting in mid March for how to get more food each week in summer. Here are some ideas:
- Have someone good at budgeting help you figure out how to stretch the money you have
- Partner with another family on getting to a food pantry more often
- Use food delivery services with another family and share the delivery cost and plan ahead for a whole week of groceries needed
- Have neighbors shop sales – send someone to Sprouts to buy the produce on sale and get enough for two or four families.
- Use a crock pot for meals that are healthy and easy.
- Summer food locations – work those spots to the maximum so your children can have free lunch one day a week, two days or ?
- Start using methods to cook more at once: make bags of carrots and apples, and peanut butter and celery sticks.
JEFFCO EATS is going to ask families to sign up to get a bit extra food each week beginning in April to save away like a chipmunk for summer foods in their pantry. This will be a small reminder for coming up with a better game plan.
If you would like to donate to help us buy this additional food just click here: https://jeffcoeats.org/donate/ Please let us know what you do to help in a school or in your after school club or church ? We want to give Moms and Dads and Grandma and Grandpa and neighbors some great ways to reduce the silent suffering of being hungry amidst a sea of people who are doing just fine. Believing together we can help Jeffco Eat.