Elkhart School District in Indiana is making use of its leftover food. Students don’t have to go hungry on nights and weekends anymore because the school teamed up with a nonprofit that ensures kids in need have enough food.
Cultivate, the South Bend-based nonprofit collects leftover food and repackages it into frozen take-home meals. “Mostly, we rescue food that’s been made but never served by catering companies, large foodservice businesses, like the school system,” said Jim Conklin, the organization’s board president.
Most schools make too much food. Saving the leftovers allows the meals to go back to the people they were initially prepared for; the students. “Over-preparing is just part of what happens. We take well-prepared food, combine it with other food and make individual frozen meals out if it,” Conklin added. A school district employee, Natalie Bickel, noticed a lot of cafeteria food was going to waste. Thankfully, now Cultivate comes to the school three times a week to rescue the food.
In Woodland Elementary school in the Elkhart district, twenty kids get their backpacks filled with eight frozen meals every Friday until the school year is over. Melissa Ramey, who works for Elkhart’s Chamber of Commerce, claims it’s making a huge impact. “It was heartbreaking to hear that children go home on the weekends and that they don’t have anything to eat,” she said.
Now, students won’t have to worry about where their next meal will come from, and they can focus on their homework instead. The Elkhart school system wants to expand the resourceful food program to other schools.
