BARRHEAD - Barrhead and District Community Support Services (FCSS) wants to ensure no child goes hungry.
However, they are not clear on the best way to accomplish that, so executive director Karen Gariepy said they are reviewing their programming to determine how to ensure children receive adequate food and nutrition.
The Barrhead Leader spoke to Gariepy on Sept. 20, just before she accepted a $2,000 donation for children's nutrition programs from the OB's Last Gasp tournament at the Barrhead Golf Club.
The annual golf tournament, originally named after one of its founders, Don Sharp, started in 1991 and featured more than 104 golfers, with the proceeds of a raffle going towards FCSS.
Gariepy said there is some misconception in the public that the organization was no longer providing school lunch programming as programs of those types did not fall under the organization's mandate.
Earlier in the summer, FCSS informed Pembina Hills School Division (PHSD) and Barrhead Elementary School (BES) that it would no longer be sponsoring a hot lunch program at the school, which it had done for over 20 years.
She said while it is true that programming such as the hot lunch program does not fall under the typical envelope of FCSS programs, they decided to halt it because they did not feel they were reaching the children in need.
Under traditional FCSS funding, programming must be preventative. However, the Barrhead FCSS is unique in the province because it is a not-for-profit society and, therefore, can offer programming outside the provincial/municipal 80/20 funding model through its own fundraising efforts.
"Our mandate [under our community funding wing] is to ensure that children that need food get it. It is not to ensure all the kids receive a lunch," Gariepy said.
Under the program, all students and staff were eligible for the program, which provided a daily hot lunch for the nominal fee of $4. FCSS provided subsidies of up to 100 per cent for those who could not afford the fee.
Gariepy also said that BES had other means to sponsor a lunch program.
"So, often, we were looking, scrounging for donations, or taking from our community funding pool, from other programs, when that money [for a school nutrition initiative] was already there," she said.
Gariepy added that when they investigated what other school breakfast or lunch programs looked like in other jurisdictions, FCSS found that the schools ran the majority, and if outside groups operated them, they only provided lunch or breakfasts to the students who needed them.
She also said most students who received a hot lunch subsidy at BES last year were school-referred and, as a result, weren't vetted by FCSS.
"So we don't know what the underlying issue is and can't help them move forward," Gariepy said, adding through the vetting process, families may learn of additional programming that would aid them even more.
PHSD trustees decided at their Aug. 30 meeting to take over the program at BES and will fund the program via the provincial nutrition grant.
They also felt focusing on one school in their jurisdiction was unfair.
"Fort Assiniboine, Dunstable, Neerlandia, [Barrhead Composite High School] are all schools that we've never provided for, and many of them have reached out asking for help in providing their students with lunches," Gariepy said.
As for what FCSS's school nutrition program will look like after their review is complete, Gariepy said they are still figuring out the details.
She said it might be as simple as providing the raw ingredients to individual schools, such as bread, crackers, fruit, et cetera, or, in BES's case, subsidizing the school's hot lunch program for eligible students.
Gariepy added they may not go through the schools themselves and instead provide families, through the food bank, with extra or separate school lunch hampers.
"We just do not know yet, but we are definitely working on programming to ensure children do not go hungry," she said.
Barry Kerton, TownandCountryToday.com
