Best Practices | BP & FM | Program
Models
Submitted by
linda vogler on 01/25/2002
We here in Charlotte have a model program that is a powerful
collaboration that addresses hunger and the root cause of hunger which
is unemployment. Unofficially, we are called the Nutrition Coalition
because though housed under the same roof, we are separate agencies
with separate Boards and separate 501c3s. Community Food Rescue is the
collection agency for rescued fresh and perishable food. Friendship
Trays is the delivery system and Community Culinary School of
Charlotte is the training program. Friendship Trays is the grandmother
agency at the age of 26. This is a meals-on wheels program serving
over 500 recipients per day. Recipients are people who other wise
would be unable to stay at home if their meals were not delivered to
them. Most of the people are elderly with over 60% receiving special
diets. We have over 1800 volunteer drivers. Some come once a month,
some once a week and so forth. Each recipient gets a cold selection (
salad, bread, dessert) and hot (entree, vegetable, starch) selection.
Friendship Trays is taking part in a test program for a year with the
county. We are packing frozen meals for one week for people on the
county list. These meals are delivered in coolers. The meals come
prepared and frozen from a company in Chicago. My hope has always been
to do this in some form, but with the meals prepared and frozen by us.
I'll report on how the experiment goes throughout the year.
Submitted by Nancy
Russman on 11/09/2000 Each week at the Louisville Community
Kitchen, we send out an order sheet to each location with what food is
available to them. They order the food they need for the week and we
deliver it to them. They do the cooking on site. Each KC has a site
manager and a cook. Some sites let the kids help cook, but there can
be a liability if a kid gets cut or burnt.
We have a donor that has given us the money to give the kids a piece
of fresh fruit and a juice box to take home. Many of the cafes have
had to stop giving this to the kids to take home and just serve it on
site. The kids weren't taking the food home, they were leaving it
outside, trading it for various items, throwing it at each other. You
name it. We don't want to give them food that can go bad because they
take it home and we don't know what happens from there. Somebody eats
a dinner that has been sitting out all night and gets sick we get a
bad name.
We have done a program we call "Kids in the Kitchen" that was real
successful. It was three nights during Kids cafe and we showed them
how to wash their hands, make snacks, and sandwiches. What ever they
learned to do that night we gave them a brown bag with the ingredients
in it to take home and make at home. I think the most perishable item
we sent home was cream cheese.
Submitted by LeRoy
Danielson on 11/09/2000 We have the benefit of being located right
at the RI Food Bank, which is affiliated with Second harvest. The Food
Bank rescues food from restaurants and suppliers that otherwise would
go to waste. usually it is damaged product, mis-orders, or rejected
truck-loads. The big cost is that we must either pay for the shipping
or send one of our trucks to pick it up. anyways, the rescued food
comes in, we inventory it, and the Chef Instructor uses amazing
creativity to piece random foods into great meals for Kids Cafe. Our
students prep and cook the 625 meals which are served Tuesday through
Friday. We just opened a new site at our fifth local Boys and Girls
Club. The BGC's in this area were in dire need of meals, as they could
not afford to feed the children, some of whom would stay at the club
until 9pm with nothing but a snack at 4pm. 80% of the parents are on
federal assistance, and we suspect that many of these children were
living on one meal a day--the one they got at school. Also, we are now
targeting B/G Club parents to enter our Community Kitchen training
program. It is more attractive to them since they will be cooking for
their own children.
The meals are delivered hot to the BGC's. For this purpose, we have
three drivers that deliver to 5 sites--each ranging from 50-200 kids.
The meals are cooked in our kitchen by the students and need to be
finished, wrapped, and stowed at reg. temps. in travel cambros for
transport. Because we lost an unexpected number of students during
this session, we have taken some of the pressure off of them by
bringing Johnson and Wales volunteers in to help. We have only 4
students right now--after starting with 11 (max cap.) Check other
topics like assessment tools for my discussion on that.... Menus:
Roast Beef & Gravy, Mash potato, fresh veg. Mex. Lasagna and salad
Blue-fish, seasoned rice, salad turkey with cream sauce over pasta,
salad Flake baked chicken, roasted potato, corn The children range in
ages five to 13--mostly 6-10. Chef heather makes sure all recipes
follow the highest nutritional standards.. Most Fridays they do an
"easy day" with cold sandwiches so we have time for more field trips
and fun activities with the students. The only problem with the BGC's
is that they have come to "expect" the service from the food bank. I
don't think we did a good job of informing them of the efforts we go
through to provide these meals, so even asking them favors--like
making a thank-you card for a generous donor, or hosting an afternoon
media event--is like pulling teeth. Not helped by the fact that they
are consistently under-staffed, over-worked, and resource-stretched.
Then again, anyone working at a community kitchen know about that.
Submitted by Jane
Tally on 11/09/2000 Chef and the Child is sponsored through the
American Culinary Federation, the national chefs association. It is
similar to Kids' Cafe, providing nutritional education and meals to
children and/or needy families with children. It doesn't require
membership to American Second Harvest as does Kids'Cafe. There are
many models. We have several natural connections to provide meals to
families, either through Head Start or our property owner, Yarco's
residents.
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