Local Community Impact

 
School District of Lancaster
Power Packs Project
 
Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime.
 
  • Power Packs provides weekend food and nutritional information to families within the School District of Lancaster who are food insecure when the school's lunch program is not available to them. Families are taught how to stretch their limited food dollars using the food provided by the Power Packs Project. The goal of the program is to empower families to regularly provide healthy meals and that children return to school, well-fed and ready to learn. Power Packs provides long-term solutions to end childhood hunger.
  • The Power Packs Project recognizes the vital role that nutrition plays in the ability of children to learn in school. According to the Center on Hunger and Poverty "Hungry children have a hard time learning in school, have short attention spans and, suffer more absence due to illness."
  • Each week a recipe for a low-cost meal and the ingredients to make it is provided in addition to staples like peanut butter and cereal. The Power Packs Project is in 45 schools in 12 school districts and has more than 350 volunteers who serve more than 1,500 families. Volunteers provide help at the warehouse and distribution points giving their time each week to ensure that the participating parents have the groceries and the tools to provide complete meals to their families over the weekends.
  • Each week during the school year, members of the Rotary Club of Lancaster assist with Power Packs at Washington Elementary School and Reynolds Junior High School in the School District of Lancaster.
  • One or two volunteers are scheduled to pick up the food at the Power Packs Project Warehouse and deliver it to the school.
  • Two volunteers are scheduled to pack bags of food for families who are participating in the program. A school representative assists at the distribution to insure that participating families receive the appropriate number of bags of food based on family size.