For most public school students, spring break is a time to celebrate. For those who receive free or reduced-price breakfast and lunch during the school day, the vacation can present a challenge to receiving full and healthy meals.
Multiple groups of students at the College of William & Mary are joining together to ensure the younger class of learners will not go hungry when school lets out from April 7 to 10.
Amy Clancy, a social work intern with Williamsburg-James City County Public Schools approached William & Mary’s Office of Community Engagement to see about the possibility of collaborating on a food drive for the district’s students who rely on provided meals. While the district has collected food to supply families through last Thanksgiving break and over the winter holidays, this new drive will utilize the support of the William & Mary community as well.
Clancy connected with Allison Doane, a sophomore at William & Mary. Doane serves as the president of the school’s chapter of Oxfam, a worldwide development organization that fights poverty, and service chair of the Phi Sigma Pi honors fraternity.
Doane joined forces with the Students for Education Reform organization to hold a weeklong drive to benefit WJCC families.
Students will be tabling at the Sadler Center on campus throughout the week to get students involved, and there will also be a box to collect nonperishable items in the lobby near the center’s information desk. Suggested donations include breakfast and granola bars, fruit cups, popcorn, pretzels, crackers, pudding cups, raisins, cookies and fruit snacks. All food gathered by Sunday will go to WJCC to be distributed to about 30 families from all schools in the district.
WJCC social worker Stephanie Gallas said the food ensures families – who have all been referred by their school’s social worker – have enough to feed children during the days off.
“We worry that families may not have budgeted for these extra meals,” she said.
According to Feeding America, a domestic hunger-relief charity, 23.2 percent of children in Williamsburg and 13.9 percent in James City County faced food insecurity in 2011. Doane, who is passionate about food insecurity as well as its relationship to other social justice causes, said many families have to make financial choices between competing needs in their lives and the lives of their family.
“In order to pay for that food you may be sacrificing going to the doctors,” she said.
Budget constraints also lead to the purchase of high-calorie foods, which tend to be cheaper but not healthier, and lead to health problems like obesity.
Doane said children who are hungry or malnourished have difficulty focusing and performing in school. By providing these children with complete meals, she hopes to work toward addressing the larger picture of local issues.
The public can make donations at William & Mary’s Sadler Center through Sunday.
For those interested in learning more about the cause, there will be an interactive documentary screening focusing on the intersections between childhood food insecurity and educational inequality at 7 p.m. April 7 in Tyler Hall room 201. The event will include a screening of the documentary “A Place at the Table” followed by a discussion led by Gallas.
