On Thursday afternoons, as part of the Power Packs Project, volunteers have been handing out the ingredients for inexpensive, easy-to-prepare weekend meals to Brecht Elementary School families who qualify for the subsidized school lunch program. Along with the meal ingredients and menus, parents get ideas for stretching their limited food dollars.
The Power Packs Project recognizes the vital role that nutrition plays in the ability of children to learn in school. According to the Center on Hunger and Poverty “Hungry children have a hard time learning in school, have short attention spans and, suffer more absence due to illness.” The Power Packs Project does not solve the problem with highly processed, highly sugared and expensive pre-packaged foods. Instead, each week a recipe for a low-cost meal and the ingredients to make it is provided in addition to staples like peanut butter, and cereal. Empowering the participating families to better use their food dollars and assure their children are well-fed and ready to learn at school is the goal of the program.
Members of the Manheim Township Lions Club pickup the food from the project's distribution center and transport it to the school. There, volunteer teams from St. Peters Lutheran Church repack it in appropriate amounts for distribution to individual families. The food comes from a variety of sources, including Amelia's Grocery Outlet, Central Pennsylvania Food Bank and the Community Action Program of Lancaster County.
For additional information, click here to go to the Power Packs website.
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