Photo by Erin Nelson
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Melinda Bonner, director of the Child Nutrition Program for Hoover City Schools, hands bagged meals to a family at Green Valley Elementary School on Thursday, March 19, 2020. The Hoover City Schools Child Nutrition Program began preparing bagged lunches and breakfasts Tuesday to continue providing meals for students in the school district. Volunteers with the school system and Hoover Helps are delivering meals to apartment complexes and meals can be picked up between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. at the elementary school on Friday, March 20, and will continue beginning March 30. Photo by Erin Nelson
The city of Hoover is looking for volunteers this week to partner with Hoover City Schools and the Hoover Helps and Hoover Neighborhood Bridges organizations to help feed children while school is out for the COVID-19 crisis.
The city and nonprofit groups are asking people to assemble bags of food that are ready to be handed out to children.
People are being asked to bring plastic grocery bags with the following items in each bag:
- Two boxes of macaroni and cheese
- Two cans of ravioli, spaghetti or soups
- Two cans of fruit or fruit cups
- Two bags of Goldfish, chips or other snack items
- Two boxes or bottles of fruit juice
Organizers of the food distribution drive are directing people not to include anything that contains peanuts due to children who have peanut allergies.
The items can be brought to Green Valley Elementary School at 3200 Old Columbiana Road and Rocky Ridge Elementary School at 2876 Old Rocky Ridge Road between 8 and 10 a.m. through Friday, April 3.
Hoover Helps and Hoover Neighborhood Bridges volunteers are distributing the food to any child age 18 and younger.
These bags replace the food normally sent home in kids’ backpacks for the weekends. Hoover Helps’ 16 faith-based partners that normally supply the food are having a tougher time coming up with some of the needed items due to short supplies in some stores, said Greg Bishop, one of the founders of Hoover Helps.
Also, the Community Food Bank of Central Alabama, which also supplies some of the food for the weekend backpack bags, now is distributing food through other channels since school is no longer in session, he said.
Hoover Helps and Hoover Neighborhood Bridges, with assistance from Hoover school and parks and recreation employees, were able to give out 1,287 bags of food the week before what was supposed to be spring break and 500 bags of food during the spring break week, he said.
That’s in addition to the daily breakfasts and lunches handed out by the child nutrition staff for Hoover City Schools, he said. School employees handed out food for more than 2,500 children the week before spring break, he said. They’re making a huge difference, he said.
“We’ve all got to partner together on this whole thing and make sure people in the community are getting the help they need,” he said.
For more information about Hoover Helps, go to hooverhelps.org or email hooverhelps@gmail.com. Donations can be made through the website as well.
When food is available through the Community Food Bank of Central Alabama, Hoover Helps can get four times as much food for the same amount of money, Bishop said.
