The Winkler and District Food Cupboard and Central Station Community Centre are making sure local families have access to nutritious snacks for their kids through the summer months.
The food cupboard received a grant from Food Banks Canada to bring its After the Bell program back to the community.
“This is actually the second year we’ve gotten it,” shared Phyllis Kroeker, who is involved in the food bank’s food rescue program. “It was so well received last year that we applied again.”
After the Bell supplies food banks across the country with shelf-stable snack kits filled with healthy, kid-friendly foods to be distributed weekly to school-aged children during the summer when the school meal programs are on hiatus.
“We got 800 healthy food packs this year,” Kroeker said, explaining they’re full of things like granola bars, oatmeal, cereal, crackers, and other tasty but nutritious treats. They also received funding to add fresh fruits and vegetables to the kits each week.
“The kids are really enjoying it all this year,” she noted. “They enjoyed it last year, but this year they’ve said it’s even better.”
Those 800 kits are enough to keep 100 children in snacks through the summer. The food cupboard has worked with Central Station, Child and Family Services, and school liaisons to ensure the families who need it most have access to the kits.
“They’ve got some great connections, so we’ve partnered with them on this,” Kroeker said.
Not all, but certainly some of the participating kids access the school meal programs through the rest of the year.
“Some of them might be getting topped up at school with granola bars or lunches,” Kroeker said. “Now parents have their kids home 24/7, and you want to have snacks in the cupboard for them.”
These kits help fill the gap, and they’ve been getting rave reviews from kids and parents alike.
“One of the moms last year told us, “This saves my summer,’” Kroeker shared. “That, to me, just summed up why we do this.”
It’s certainly been a godsend for Eva Wiebe and her three kids, age eight, 11, and 13. This is their second summer in the program.
“This helps so much because everything’s already packaged, everything’s individual, there’s one for each kid, and so it’s equal and it’s so convenient,” she said, sharing she’s set up a little snack bar in her home where each child can dive into their respective stock of treats as needed. “Everything’s neatly organized because they all really like the structure … so I put it all there and I’m like, ‘There’s your options.’”
And it’s much more options than the kids would have access to without the program.
“They’ve even gone and tried things they normally wouldn’t have tried,” Wiebe said, noting her kids especially love the fresh fruits provided.
“I’m very grateful to have the opportunity to receive these snack kits,” she said. “Grateful and blessed.”
