MCMS Cares

The purpose of our MCMS Cares project was threefold.  The first was to collect items for hungry families in our community.  The second was to collect money for NRG packs (which are bags filled with food for hungry children in our school district on the weekends).   The third was to raise money for the National No Kid Hungry campaign.

          This project relates to Family and Consumer Sciences in many ways.  In Family and Consumer Sciences we learned how nutrition is important in everyone’s daily lives.  Children that don’t get proper nutrition struggle to perform well in class and in their daily lives.   They are often weak and tired.  Their school education suffers because of their hunger.  It is difficult to think about learning when their stomach is growling and all they can think about is food.

Family Relations is another Family and Consumer Sciences area that is related to this topic.  Parents become stressed because they cannot afford to feed their children properly.  When they do have food to eat, it may not sufficient to end their hunger, because it has to be rationed to last the entire week.  When parents get stressed over finances and the lack of food, it may change the dynamics of a family.  There may be more fighting and arguing at home due to the high stress level.  This causes children to come to school upset about what is going on at home and often worried about their parents.  This also affects their learning process.

Individual and Family Health is another Family and Consumer Sciences topic that is related to our project.  Hunger is an area that directly affects one’s health.   When children are not eating healthy foods and drinking healthy beverages, they cannot grow strong bodies and be physically fit.  Their lack of nourishment can cause them to not perform as well as students who have proper nutrition and good health.

Our community was concerned about the large number of children that go hungry on weekends.  They developed a program to help feed these children, where the kids would receive a sack filled with non-perishable items to eat over the weekend.  The bags are called NRG packs, which stands for Nutritional Resource Goodies.  These contain some protein, fruits and vegetables, grains, dairy, and healthy snacks.  100 students in our school district receive these every Friday before our three-day weekend.  Our school district only has four-day weeks, so students have an extra day to be hungry on the weekends.  These NRG packs allow children to eat over the long weekends and help them be stronger.

The Montgomery County R-II School district has a 57% rate of free and reduced lunch meals served to students.  The local food pantry serves over 50 families each month, and is funded by donations from local churches, organizations, and individuals.  Our FCCLA chapter sponsoring a food drive would help to fill their pantry allowing many hungry families to receive food.  Many of these families have children in our school, so this has potential to impact our students.

We have several goals for this.  One of our goals is to collect 500 or more items for the local food pantry, which will help local families.  Another goal is to raise over $300.00 from our Eat Out against Hunger event to help with our NRG packs program for hungry children in our school district.  The final goal is to raise $100.00 from our Snowflakes to End Hunger event to send to the national No Kid Hungry campaign.

It is our hope that we will make a difference in many lives through the efforts of our project.   No one should ever have to go hungry.  We hope that someday there will be “no kid hungry” in America.