The 108 Mile Elementary School has been running a breakfast program since mid-October, says Nanci Lundquist, the school PAC chair.
“We give the kids fruit, vegetables, milk, sort of hot breakfast [and] cereal every single morning,” she says. “We originally obviously started as a needs-based program because it was through the food bank that brought the food to us but it’s turned into more of a social thing. The kids come down, we probably average about 40 to 60 kids per morning, and they just come down and hang out and they get to know each other.
“It’s actually really cool watching grade sevens play Pokemon with grades twos.”
They get food from the food bank, who get food donated when it’s about to expire in the grocery store, she says.
“Because we obviously need a lot more money than just that random donation, we got donations through the 108 Lions Club, the 100 Mile Lions Club, Lifecycle [Financial], in town, and Vision Care,” she says. “The whole program is run purely on donations.”
She adds they are buying food from the 108 Mile Supermarket at a discounted rate for the program.
They want to make it run from September to June (for free), which means a lot of fundraising, says Lundquist.
“We’ve got kids from [the] leadership program that come down and volunteer through the school which brings in even more kids because it’s kids serving kids. That’s a huge thing. When we first started, we probably had about 20 kids coming through and every week it’s getting bigger and bigger and bigger. What we’re hoping for is to get at least half the school coming through.
On Monday, Dec. 4 Ingrid Meyer came down on behalf of the 108 Lions Club to donate $500 to the program.