After-school meal
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on January 20, 2015 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Nirell Young, 12, laughs after making a joke at the Boys and Girls Club of Wayne County. Nirell is among the 100-plus children at the club benefiting from a recently introduced program that provides members with a late afternoon meal and snack before they go home in the evening. Spaghetti is a favorite meal of many of the kids.
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Jeffrey Barnes prepares a plate of food for the children at the Boys and Girls Club of Wayne County.
It all started with a phone call and a question.
But sometimes that's all it takes to make a difference.
Jo Heidenreich, development director at Boys & Girls Club of Wayne County, is used to people asking about the programs at the club.
But Nov. 7, the conversation went beyond accomplishments and statistics.
At a meeting with a local businessman who had been a supporter of the club, she said he asked, "Do you feed the kids?"
"No, we don't. We don't have the funding," was her response.
"They're served breakfast at school; they're served lunch at school," she explained, adding, "We don't know how many of them eat lunch. A lot of them are served lunch at 10:30 in the morning.
"They come to us at 3:30 in the afternoon, leave by 7 and we don't know if they get a meal at night."
Then came the unexpected question from the man, she said -- "Well, what can we do about it?"
"That's kind of where we ended the conversation," she said.
The Boys & Girls Club already has a summer food program, providing a daily meal for its patrons when the school is not in session.
"We will serve anywhere from 150 to 210 kids during the summer, just at this unit," she said.
Mrs. Heidenreich followed up on the inquiry. Her first call was to K&W, already an approved vendor, which provides food used in the federally funded summer program.
"We had applied and were approved as a site. K&W would bring the food. We would serve it, one meal a day (lunch) during the summer," she said.
At a meeting with the district and local managers of K&W, she learned about a feeding program already in place with other Boys & Girls clubs and preschools. There are also groups in the state that take care of administrative fees and do the paperwork on such a program.
The Child and Adult Care Food Program, or CACFP, is a federally funded nutrition program that provides healthy, nutritious meals and snacks to eligible children. Mrs. Heidenreich also contacted one of the state's programs, Cape Fear Tutoring in Wilmington, and was able to secure help with the administrative part of the service.
The connections made, the logistics were soon worked out for the federal funding. Cape Fear would take care of the administrative aspects and K&W would handle the food and delivery, with the Boys & Girls Club providing the site and the children and would keep records.
"All we have to do is serve," she said.
The meals would be covered by the federal funding, she said. All but 27 cents per child per meal.
"We went back to the businessman and told him about the 27 cents," she said. "We told him probably a maximum of 150 (children) during the school year and that can vary. He agreed to help sponsor this.
"We asked if he would like us to find somebody else to help him. He was willing to start the program. (And he said), 'If you don't feed the children, they're not developing, they're not growing.' This was something he was very interested in doing so he agreed to do it."
As it turned out, when the matter was presented to the B&G Club board, one board member had expressed a similar interest. A meeting was promptly set up between the two to continue the conversation, Mrs. Heidenreich said -- Paul Benton, owner of Chevrolet of Goldsboro, and the board member, Chris Merritt, along with his wife, Alissa, both teachers at Eastern Wayne High School.
"Now they're co-sponsoring the program, making up the difference in what the program won't provide," she said. "Dec. 8 we served our first meal."
Every day between 3 and 4 p.m., as soon as those children get off the school bus and enter the club, a hot meal awaits them. Then, before they leave the club to go home, Mrs. Heidenreich said, they are served a snack.
The club youths are "really excited," she said, and "can't wait to get the food."
It has been heartwarming for her to see the children nourished and happy, she said, and the effort has also opened up the door for volunteers to come in for an hour and help serve meals or monitor the club members.
As for the benefactors of the generous provision, they said they were not seeking attention and prefer to stay in the background. The important thing, they said, was "doing the right thing" for children in this community.