Summer Food

The Salvation Army Summer Food Program is off and running for the summer, this is made possible by a grant from the USDA.  I went over to help out one day to see how it really works.  As of now, there are about 550 lunches that get packed out to 32 locations across Pettis County.  We have 6 cooks that prepare the all food and put it in deliverable containers.  I was assigned a location, that needed 55 lunches served, so I pack 55 cartons of milk, sandwiches, peaches, and applesauce into 2 big coolers.  Then I grabbed a stack of lunch sacks and a clipboard to keep track of everything that we passed out.  I was paired up with another volunteer and we set out in a van loaded with 5 coolers, the other 3 coolers had to be dropped off at other locations, where volunteers waited for the arrival of the food.  Once we got to our site we started assembling lunches into the sacks, to make easy work of handing the food out to the kids, because when the kids start coming they tend to come in small groups to our picnic tables.  The children are encouraged to sit and eat with each other and it is also part of the grant requirements.  The Pettis County Health Department does come and do inspections to make sure the food is safe and that the volunteers are properly handling the food.  The children sit and visit with us and the other children, so it makes for a nice picnic.  There is a Youth Director that makes the rounds at different locations everyday to make this a learning experience too.  Currently, we are expecting to exceed last summers numbers.