#TSRPositiveImages: Indiana School District Takes Unused Cafeteria Food To Create Take-Home Meals For Children In Need

I’m hoping this story will brighten your day, #Roommates, and inspire you to do something good. There’s a school district in Indiana that deserves some real recognition for helping out their students in need.

According to @CBSNews, Indiana’s #ElkhartSchoolDistrict serves its students breakfast and lunch at school but they are aware that some students may go hungry on nights and weekends.

So they partnered up with nonprofit organization #Cultivate to collect unused cafeteria food to repackage it into take-home meals for the children.

“Mostly, we rescue food that’s been made but never served by catering companies, large food service businesses, like the school system,” said Jim Conklin, the charity’s board president.

Many school’s over-prepare food and by saving the leftovers, the meals go back to the children they were originally prepared for.

“Over-preparing is just part of what happens,” Conklin said. “We take well-prepared food, combine it with other food and make individual frozen meals out if it.”

At one elementary school in the district, 20 kids will receive a backpack filled with food every Friday. Each backpack will contain eight frozen meals to carry the family through the weekend. This will go on until the end of the school year.

Natalie Bickel, who works for the school district’s student services department, said officials noticed they were wasting a lot of cafeteria food, but didn’t think there was anything they could do about it.

Now, Cultivate comes to the school three times a week to “rescue” the food.

“It’s making a big impact,” said Melissa Ramey, who works for the town’s Chamber of Commerce. “It was heartbreaking to hear that children go home on the weekends and that they don’t have anything to eat.”

Thanks to the backpacks that Cultivate fills with food, students won’t have to worry about where their next meal will come from.

They students will know it was made with love in their school cafeteria, and then “rescued” just for them.

This is an amazing idea and we hope to see more school districts try this!

TSR STAFF: Christina C! @cdelafresh