Weekend Food for Kids Program Provides Food Assistance to Schools

Assistance League of Northern Virginia held another successful food packing recently and assembled 1,660 bags that contained an assortment of nonperishable food to sustain elementary school students over the weekend when school-supplied meals are not available. Assistance League first launched a food program in 2010. Since then the Weekend Food for Kids program has been expanded by packing more bags and delivering them to more schools. The program's expansion was helped significantly during the 2013-14 school year when Dominion Energy-Virginia invited Assistance League to hold the events at its facility and also provided drivers and trucks to deliver the food bags.

The monthly packings go smoothly because of the well-organized system developed by the coordinators for this program. Employees of Dominion Energy not only helped with the packing but also delivered the bags to 6 elementary schools in Fairfax and Prince William counties immediately afterwards. In addition to the food bags, grocery gift cards were delivered to a separate school whose families are still struggling with the impact of the pandemic. Since resuming the Weekend Food for Kids program in February, Assistance League has provided that school with 70 gift cards each month.

Assistance League was honored that local TV Station ABC/WJLA featured a report on our program on its evening news segment [ALNV_Dominion-WFFK ]. The WJLA coverage highlighted the great work that Assistance League and Dominion do each month for food-insecure students throughout our community.