{"id":17124,"date":"2017-04-26T17:31:05","date_gmt":"2017-04-26T21:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=17124"},"modified":"2017-04-26T17:31:05","modified_gmt":"2017-04-26T21:31:05","slug":"food-pantry-seeks-summer-solution-for-students-in-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/food-pantry-seeks-summer-solution-for-students-in-need\/","title":{"rendered":"Food Pantry seeks summer solution for students in need"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Each year, the Aurora Food Pantry serves approximately 250 children and teens whose families know that, in many cases, their hardships in providing healthy meals to their kids will be eased somewhat during the school year thanks to in-school meal and snack programs.
\nBut what happens to these kids and teens over the summer months when school is out and these programs are dormant through September?
\nThe Aurora Food Pantry is looking to provide an answer \u2013 all they need is a professional kitchen and some space.
\nThe local food bank is hoping to hit the ground running on a new food program as soon as school lets out for summer to provide hot child-friendly meals for children, accompanied by an adult, at least three times a week while, at the same time, helping families make ends meet at mealtimes over the weekend.
\n\u201cLast summer, at the eleventh hour, we had a penny-dropping moment,\u201d explains Allison Stuart, Board Chair of the Aurora Food Pantry. \u201cWhat do kids do if they have been able to take advantage of snack programs at school? When school is out, neither formal nor informal programs are available to kids and to the families. We purchased some extra food to give to families with school-age children, put them in a bag, enough to make a couple of lunches.
\n\u201cBut,\u201d she says, \u201cit was really last minute. We started doing a bit of research and decided to try and do a program this summer that was a little bit more focused on the child and would be, as my daughter used to say, \u2018more funner\u2019 than simply getting some food in a bag.\u201d
\nEnter the School\u2019s Out program.
\nAurora Food Pantry brainstormed a number of options, wanting a program that was manageable, but there were very few templates out there for them to rely upon. Programs stemming out of the United States, for instance, were too formal in many cases and presented some logistical concerns.
\n\u201cOur idea is we could use a professional kitchen in, say, one of the churches or other centres that has one, that might not be active during the summer to provide a hot child-friendly meal for a child \u2013 plus an adult, because we can\u2019t become a babysitting service \u2013 three days a week and then, two days a week, provide them with something they can take home.\u201d
\nThat\u2019s not all. To give it some \u2018more funner\u2019 street cred, they hope to bring in some entertainment such as a musician or singer to give it an atmosphere \u2013 but without a kitchen, the program itself could fall through the cracks.
\n\u201cWe have to find a site because this is not the site,\u201d says Ms. Stuart of their Industrial Parkway South facility they share with the York Region Food Network, as well as community groups Big Brothers Big Sisters of York and Hospice King Aurora. \u201cWe have to find something accessible. Something in Central Aurora would be really good. Part of the challenge of that, of course, is I live in Old Aurora so my idea of \u2018central\u2019 is around the Town Park area, but I am sure from a demographic point-of-view, \u2018Central Aurora\u2019 is not there anymore!
\n\u201cWe need good advice on where it should be. Churches are one group we will be pursing because they are there, but maybe there are other sites more accessible.\u201d
\nWhen they get the program off the ground \u2013 and they still hope to hit the ground running come July \u2013 the summer initiative will be open throughout the summer to registered clients of the Aurora Food Pantry. Currently serving 600 family groups, this breaks down to 250 Food Pantry clients between the ages of zero and 18.
\nOnce the groundwork is completed, there will be new volunteer opportunities to take the initiative the rest of the way.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re going to need more adult volunteers to help with the program itself because if we\u2019re running three days a week we\u2019re going to need people for each of them,\u201d says Ms. Stuart. \u201cWe\u2019re also going to need people who know how to cook for a crowd and provide entertainment.
\n\u201cThis isn\u2019t a \u2018send your kid to the park with a free lunch for all families\u2019 program. This is focused on people who are hungry and in need. It is going to be really great and I think the kids are going to think it is fun \u2013 and that is a really important feature of this!\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Each year, the Aurora Food Pantry serves approximately 250 children and teens whose families know that, in many cases, their hardships in providing healthy meals to their kids will be eased somewhat during the school year thanks to in-school meal and snack programs. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":17098,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/2017-04-27-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4sc","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-25 22:57:34","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}