No. 9
My brother Henry and his family moved to Chincoteague, VA, in February 1995. Over the past 17 years, the family has had to make a number of significant decisions. While we were raised Presbyterian, the island offered only three churches: Methodist, Baptist and Catholic. They joined the Methodist congregation. My sister-in-law Jodi taught elementary ed in the Fairfax County School system before she left the DC area; now she's teaching in Accomack County, and she has taught ESL (k-12) and PreKindergarten. When we visit them, everywhere we go, people greet Henry and Jodi by name. In fact, Henry is the unofficial Mayor of Chincoteague,,and Jodi regularly organizes funerals and other get-togethers. My brother instructs his annual interns about how to survive a small town: "If you get involved, you'll love living here; if you don't, you'll hate it here."
As I now find myself an even smaller community than Chincoteague, I have taken Henry's advice to hear. I recognized that now that the furniture is set and the everything things are set, it was time to reach out to my community. I did a quick Google search and discovered that the Middle School has a mentor/tutoring program that was desperate for adult help. "I can do that," I thought, and followed through with all the testing/training requirements. During our meeting, the Middle School coordinator Jen also told me briefly about the Berkeley County Backpack Program.
Since we were both out most of the day, we decided to go out for dinner to catch up. As is our pattern, I like ice cream or fro-yo as a treat. So, after our dinner we strolled down to the local Sweet Frog to build our own frozen yogurt sundae. YUM! Who was there? The Backpack program ladies and they invited me to the weekly "bagging" that was slated for 9:30 am the following morning. How could I say No?! I now had an appointment on my rather empty calendar.
As I learned this morning, the Backpack Program feeds children who have "unreliable" food resources over the weekend days each week. In plain English, these are children who rely on the free and reduced breakfast/lunch program in the public schools as their primary means for food. So, I showed up at the Hedgesville Community Church at 9:30 am to meet a dozen other women who were staunch supporters of the program. By 11:45 am, we packed 257 bags of weekend meals for students (PreK through 12) that attend 16 different schools county-wide. What I also learned is that is that only a fraction of those that really need help are getting it. For example, of the 1,800 students that attend Hedgesville High School, nearly 600 of them are part of the free and reduced meal program. Of that number, only 55 are participating in the Backpack program. This means that there are a lot of hungry kids out there on non-school days.
Even as I packed bag after bag of Chef Boryardee and mac & cheese--knowing that these processed foods contain too much sodium and little to no fiber--I felt like we were doing a good thing for our local children. One of the main stipulations for the food contributions is that the child can prepare the meal on his/her own. That's a low bar when you're feeding 4 and 5 year olds. One positive: one of the local orchards donated fresh apples to go in the bags this week. Given that we are entering apple season in Berkeley County, I am glad to know that the student will have something fresh in their weekly bag.
So, I am now "in it," as Henry would say. Even if it pushes some of my ideas about healthy eating, I have to tell you it feels good. It feels like I am part of a community and for that, I am grateful.
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