Jen has been quietly doing A Thing for the last four years, and it has been growing steadily in size and scope. She got involved collecting food donations for local elementary schools so that kids would have meals over the summer break; a little-known fact is that here in the US roughly 15% of school-age kids experience food insecurity. She started putting the word out and collecting donations at the church across the street, and last year we wound up with a half a ton of food stored on our front porch. She and another friend then divided our dining room in half to split the food out equally, and they dropped it off a few weeks before the end of the school year.
This year, she was able to double the amount of food collected; carefully organizing, weighing and storing the donations by category, she wound up with a literal ton of food. Realizing she couldn’t split it all out by herself, she organized a volunteer effort on Saturday morning to divide, repackage, and move it into vehicles for delivery Monday morning.
One of the deliveries filled every available inch of the Scout. The other delivery was split between three normal cars, because a quarter-ton of food made the springs in the CR-V sag to the bump stops.
We are all exhausted from the logistics, planning, execution, and delivery, but I couldn’t be prouder of Jen and the work she put into this. And please, donate to a food pantry near you if at all possible; kids can’t learn or study when they’re hungry.