Students in Indiana's Elkhart School District are served breakfast and lunch at school, but may go hungry on nights and weekends. So, the school joined forces with an innovative nonprofit to ensures kids in need have enough to eat.
The South Bend-based nonprofit called Cultivate collects leftover food from and repackages into take-home meals. The charity's board president, Jim Conklin told WSBT how they do it. "Mostly, we rescue food that's been made but never served by catering companies, large food service businesses, like the school system," Conklin said.
Many school's over-prepare food and by saving the leftovers, the meals go back to the people they were originally prepared for: kids. "Over-preparing is just part of what happens," Conklin said. "We take well-prepared food, combine it with other food and make individual frozen meals out if it."
At one elementary school in the district, 20 kids will get a backpack filled with food every Friday. Eight frozen meals will go into each backpack to carry the family through the weekend. This will go on until the end of the school year.
