Club Kids get Dinner 5 nights per week!

Posted: 01-09-12

Boys & Girls Club of Burlington Announces Successful Partnership to Feed Hungry Children

Burlington, VT – The Boys & Girls Club of Burlington is pleased to announce an expanded partnership with the Burlington Schools Food Program that allows us to serve dinner five nights a week at two of our three sites.

In 2009 we began to see a jump in the number of hungry children at our afterschool programs in Burlington’s Old North End. “This is not ‘It’s the end of the day and I need a snack’ hungry, it is ‘it’s the end of the month and there is no food in the house’ hungry”’ explains Mary Alice McKenzie, Executive Director, Boys and Girls Club of Burlington. That year, thanks to the Vermont Foodbank, many donors and volunteers, the Club initiated the Kid’s Café, a twice weekly hot meal service for all our members and any parents who showed up.

Since then, another significant partner, City Market/Onion River Co-op has supported our food programs with grants, cooking classes and opportunities for our staff to learn how to prepare healthy, inexpensive meals.

December 2011, Doug Davis of the Burlington Schools Food program made us an offer – he would administer and expand the free and reduced meal program to our kids from breakfast and lunch at school to dinner five nights a week at our two Burlington sites. This is a substantial project: the preparation, delivery of food and the oversight and documentation of the federal requirements are too daunting for our small charity to undertake. Thanks to this multi-layered partnership, 250 children are getting three good meals a day, five days per week, all year long.