Poor Families Get Through the School Breaks with the Help of CFS

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Due to the high level of poverty, more and more families are not capable of providing their children with food all year round. However, they do not admit that they can’t feed their kids because of the great fear the community will take them away. That is why an existing hunger is not advertised and is hidden behind the doors of the families with low income.

In result, children do not thrive or die, but they are likely to become ill and it takes them a long time to recover. Moreover, most of them face problems with concentration in school and demonstrate poor performance. Bad grades at school lead to career failure and small adult income that makes the cycle of poverty go on.

Of course, children receive free lunch at school, but it is only 180 days a year. What about other 185 days? Here comes in handy Childhood Food Solutions (CFS), whose aim is to develop solutions to childhood food insecurity problems. The organization, founded in July 2007, is focused on fighting hunger in the area of Cincinnati zip code 45225, which has a high level of poverty, crime and hungry, food-insecure children. CFS provides sacks of groceries to children in the area with zip code 45225.

For the children who are students of the public schools in the Cincinnati area, school breaks mean a period without homework, tests, teachers – and food. It can be explained by the fact that later in the month (that is when the breaks usually start) most of the families with low income are already run out of money they receive from the government for nutrition.

Tony Fairhead, a chief director and a constitutor of the CFS, feels extremely concerned about this matter and at the same time very scared. He helps volunteers to organize the package of bags of groceries, which more than 5000 children from the poverty-stricken neighborhoods will get for spring break. The sacks are quite big to keep the students fed till the end of the school break. The sacks are mostly packed with so-called calorie-dense products, which can fill up a stomach quickly creating a feeling of satiety. The main idea is to feed students from poor families until they get access free lunch at school.

Roll Hill Academy and Ethel M. Taylor Academy in North Fairmount take part in this program of CFS for ten years. The organization is constantly expanding its territorial borders to cover more public school of the poor neighborhoods in Cincinnati. Recently, South Fairmount, Lower Price Hill and West Price Hill elementary schools have become a part of the CFS program.

It should be noted that CFS not only provides sacks of groceries during the breaks, it also sends sacks with products for last weekends of the month to the families who are short of food and helps during the summer time, as well.

Felicia Jones, the mother of kids who study at Roll Hill Academy, receives such sacks of groceries for several years. Jones mentions that despite the fact that only two of her kids are students of this public school, all five of her children are fed due to the big size of the pack. She feels extremely grateful - when her family doesn’t have food, this bag from CFS helps them to get through.