Neighborhood's Compassion Feeds 2,200 Hungry Children through MUST Summer Lunch Program

Marietta, GA---When Shelly Folino, a resident of Legacy Park subdivision in Kennesaw, began making lunches for impoverished children through the MUST Ministries Summer Lunch Program in 2009, she realized that the need extended beyond what she and her family could prepare by themselves. Six years later, her conviction has led to the annual Legacy Park Summer Lunch Initiative, providing more than 9,200 lunches to children who might otherwise have gone hungry.

Sixty percent of school-aged children in Georgia receive free or reduced-price school lunches, and many lose the promise of a stable meal when school is not in session. For that 10 week period, the MUST Ministries Summer Lunch Program delivers a daily meal to 6,000-7,000 of these children living in the North Atlanta area.

MUST relies on lunches donated by the community to meet this need. In 2009, Folino and her family made 100 lunches for MUST Summer Lunch, but with so many children needing to be fed, she was inspired to mobilize her neighbors. The following year, she reserved the Legacy Park community club house and invited others to reserve tables in the club house for a special lunch-assembling event. Each reserved table represented a promise to provide the supplies to make 100 lunches and to invite a team of friends to assemble the lunches.

The event was an enormous success and has since been held every subsequent year on the Wednesday after Memorial Day. Since its inception, the Legacy Park Summer Lunch Initiative has grown to 15-20 teams working in two shifts, and has made a total of more than 9,200 meals over the course of its five-year history. This year’s event alone produced 2,200 lunches, enough to feed a third of the children served by the MUST Summer Lunch Program for one day.

“It is just incredible what one person’s passion to help can accomplish,” says Bartina Houk, MUST Summer Lunch Coordinator for the North Cobb area. Even children pitch in, decorating the brown paper bags for the lunches while the adults prepare the lunches.

For more information about how to feed hungry children this summer or to donate lunches, go to www.mustministries.org.

MUST Ministries, celebrating its 44th anniversary, is a faith-based, 501(c)3 non-profit charitable organization dedicated to providing services to persons and families in crisis while maintaining their dignity. MUST provides food, housing, and employment, and clothing for your neighbors in need. For more information, visit www.MUSTMinistries.org or www.facebook.com/MUSTMinistries.