Nice to read a heartwarming story coming out of Ferguson, Missouri.
A fifth-grade schoolteacher from Bahama, North Carolina named Julianna Mendelsohn wanted to do something to help school kids in Ferguson, and came up with the idea of raising money for the local food banks to donate meals to kids and their families.
A teacher in North Carolina has raised nearly $80,000 to feed students from low-income families in Ferguson, Mo., who would ordinarily be getting free lunches at public schools in the St. Louis suburb but can’t because the start of the 2014-15 school year has been delayed twice as a result of civil unrest.
The 11,000-student Ferguson-Florissant School District was supposed to start classes Aug. 14 but now is scheduled to open Aug. 25, assuming that the unrest that resulted from the Aug. 9 fatal shooting of a black teenager by a police officer has stopped. This year, the high-poverty district was planning to start a federal program that allows all students to receive free lunches, not only those whose family incomes qualify them for free and reduced-price lunches, according to this report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Sixty-eight percent of kids in the Ferguson-Florissant school district quality for free or reduced-cost meals, and that number is probably higher because some families didn't fill out or turn in the paperwork to qualify.
Here's Mendlesohn's statement from her Fundly page (she has now raised nearly $150,000!):
As the world watches the events unfolding in Ferguson, many people have thought “how can I help?”. As a public school teacher, my first thought is always about the children involved in any tragic situation like this. When I found out school had been canceled for several days as a result of the civil unrest, I immediately became worried for the students in households with food instability. Many children in the US eat their only meals of the day, breakfast and lunch, at school. With school out, kids are undoubtedly going hungry.
ALL OF THIS MONEY WILL GO TO FEED KIDS IN FERGUSON. A dollar or a hundred dollars, it doesn’t matter. You will be helping to put food in the mouth of a child who needs it. Regardless of your opinion on the civil unrest in Ferguson, there is no need for innocent children to go hungry because of it.
A reminder that there are so many ways to make a difference.