St. Cloud Group Hopes to Feed Hungry Kids in District 742

WAITE PARK -- A group of local parent are working to ensure local kids never spend a weekend hungry.

Feeding Area Children Together or FACT, is starting up a pilot program at Discovery Elementary that will send children home with full weekend meals.

Sara Greenberg-Hassan is one of FACT team members, she says they've worked very hard to make sure those meals are nutritious.

"We don't want to just send home granola bars and beef jerky. We wanted them to be complete and nutritious meals, we wanted to offer two breakfasts, two lunches and several snacks in each pack".

She adds that, eventually they'd like to feed over 100 kids a weekend at Discovery.

"Looking at other programs and the numbers, we expect to feed about 150 kids at Discovery, hopefully a week."

Greenberg-Hassan says they're starting at Discovery because up to 90 percent of kids there are on free and reduced price lunches. However, she says there are no income requirements for the program, as kids can still fall through the cracks.

The other FACT team members are:

• Suzanna Friedrich
• Helen Schommer
• Marcus Paden
• Hassan Yussuf

Greenberg-Hassan says they'd like to expand it to several more District 742 schools. They're currently accepting donations through the United Way.