Leftover School Lunches Become Free Take-Home Meals for Hungry Children

Apr 16, 2019 by apost team

A local nonprofit company partnered itself with an Indiana school district to make sure kids have enough to eat. Elkhart Community Schools, in the northern part of Indiana, saw how much food they had left each week.

They also noticed many of their students live in a home without any food. They knew what they wanted to do, but they weren’t sure how to go about doing it. They partnered with Cultivate Culinary, a South Bend nonprofit. Jim Conklin of Cultivate Culinary stated that they save food that is already made but wasn’t ever served.

apost.com

Conklin stated that it was very common for companies to over-prepare food. It's better to have too much than not enough. However, Cultivate has made a special way to direct good food to people who need it most instead of wasting it. When they rescue the food, Cultivate repackages it and creates frozen meals and redistributes those meals to those who need it.

“Mostly, we rescue food that’s been made but never served by catering companies, large food service businesses, like the school system,” Jim Conklin of Cultivate told WSBT. “You don’t always think of a school.”

Cultivate’s website states that 100,000 people don’t know where their next meal is coming from along with 1 out of every 5 children. The main goal of Cultivate is to fight hunger in the community. With their partnership with Elkhart Community Schools is a step to achieve that. About 64 percent of children in the school district qualifies for reduced or free lunches according to Inside Edition.

The supervisor of the student services, Natalie Bickel, stated that Cultivate comes to save food from Woodland Elementary about three times a week and they want to get the program into the other schools soon as well. To be able to eat throughout the weekend, twenty of the selected students will take eight frozen meals home on Fridays. There is a need for the kids so they don’t go hungry. Cultivate, along with Elkhart Community Schools, hopes to fill that need.

What do you think about this story? Do you agree that turning leftover school lunches into take-home meals is a brilliant way to reduce food waste and support hungry children? Let us know in the comments and be sure to spread the word about this amazing nonprofit!