Community organizes to feed children

Twelve Wake Forest groups – churches, civic groups and the police department – have each organized up to 10 volunteers to serve breakfast and dinner for an estimated 80 youngsters, teens and children from 1 to 18, for 10 weeks during the summer vacation for Wake County’s traditional-calendar schools.

There was an organizing meeting on Thursday, May 25, at Olive Branch Baptist Church on East Juniper Avenue where the two meals will be served. Joy Schillingsburg, the youth director at St. John’s Episcopal Church is the coordinator and spoke along with Olive Branch Pastor Damen Rawlinson and Vielka Maria Gabriel with Wake County Human Services. It is a part of the county’s summer nutrition program, and the food is provided by the North Carolina Food Bank in Raleigh.

This is the first time there has been an open site in Wake Forest for the meal program, the Wake County Summer Nutrition Program Olive Branch, Gabriel said. Wake Forest, along with several other Wake County sites, was targeted because of the high level of food insecurity in the community. The county is also sponsoring free lunches two days a week for children 18 and younger at the Northern Regional Center on East Holding Avenue.

The program begins Monday, June 12, and ends Friday, Aug. 18.

The meals will be breakfast (brunch) from 10:30 a.m. to noon and supper from 5 to 6:45 p.m. All the food comes prepackaged and frozen, meaning the volunteers only have to get the food out of the freezers and into coolers an hour or so in advance.

The groups involved are:

*Hope Lutheran Church

*Olive Branch Baptist Church

*St. John’s Episcopal Church

*Wake Forest Baptist Church

*Wake Forest Christian Church

*Wake Forest United Methodist Church

*Wake Forest Kiwanis Club

*Wake Forest Lions Club

*Wake Forest Optimist Club

*Wake Forest Rotary Club

*Wake Forest Woman’s Club

*Wake Forest Police Department, which will send a couple of officers at each meal to “hang out the kids,” Schillingsburg said.

She also said they will be happy to have individuals volunteer to work at the meals. People will help usher the children into the church basement where the fellowship/dining room is, show them to the bathroom and organize activities for the children after they eat, such as bubbles, hula hoops, different exercises, story time, music, and different games. To volunteer, email Schillingsburg at joyshill@yahoo.com.