Waukee Area Christian Services

On November 13^th, 2014, Melissa Stimple, head of the Waukee Area Christian Services, along with Denise Gerdis and Don Perschau joined the Waukee Rotary to speak about their Food Pantry, Free Clinic and Fruitful Vine Community Garden.  

 

The Food Pantry began in 2005, serving 27 families the first month.   Currently, they serve approximately 110 families a month.   Their mission is to provide food and personal care items to meet the short term needs of people in the community.  

 

The Free Clinic also began in 2005 and is a no cost healthcare clinic.   Over 1,000 patients have been served at the Free Clinic.  The clinic is open to anyone and is on a first come – first served basis.   The clinic hours are Mondays from 5:30-7pm.     

 

In 2012-2013, the Waukee Rotary participated in a district grant to help the Food Pantry and to help purchase school and personal supplies for needy Waukee School District families.  The Rotary Club also built 8 raised beds for the Community Garden and filled them with soil.    Lastly, the Rotary Club purchased a new laptop computer to be used for electronic charting for the Free Clinic.  

 

A breakdown of grant monies is shown below:

 

$647.88 in lumber, screws, soil and supplies for raised garden beds for Fruitful Vine Community Garden.

$5,830.13 in personal hygiene items and school supplies for Food Pantry.

$535.99 for laptop computer for Free Clinic.

 

We also donated 136 hours of “sweat equity” at the Food Pantry and Community Garden over the 2012-2013 Rotary year.   

 

In the summer of 2014, we packaged macaroni and cheese meals at the Hunger-Free through Rotary meal packaging event and took them to the Food Pantry to be distributed.