Making sure no one goes hungry

No child should go hungry.

That is the philosophy of Sandy McCarthy. For the last number of years McCarthy has been serving hot lunches to Barrhead Elementary School (BES) students as part of Barrhead and District FCSS hot lunch program.

And now McCarthy has another tool in her arsenal.

Since November, McCarthy has been serving a hot breakfast to a BES class every morning.

When the Barrhead Leader visited, McCarthy was preparing an egg and ham sandwich meal complete with a hash brown, fruit and a yogurt.

“The school applied for a government grant to make sure that children have a nutritious breakfast available to them,” she said.

In the 2016/17 school year Alberta Education initiated the $3.5 million School Nutrition Program pilot program in 33 elementary schools across 14 school divisions. During the program participating schools were the freedom to determine how the program was administered, whether it was a daily meal or snack as long as it adhered to the Alberta Nutrition Guidelines for Children and Youth. For the 2017 school year the program was expanded to all school divisions with a budget of $10 million.

“I do a grade at a time,” McCarthy said. “Depending on the number of classes in a grade it takes a little more than a week to go through them all. I think since it has started I have cycled through the entire school two and a half times.”

In an addition to the ‘ham and egger’ meal, other meals include French toast and a breakfast wrap. All the meals come with fruit and yogurt.

“So far French toast seems to be the students favourite,” she said.

If a student doesn’t happen to be lucky enough to be in the classroom being served on a particular morning, and did not have breakfast at home, McCarthy has an assortment of cereal, granola bars and fruit available for them. There are also usually a few meals left over, due to absences, that are then redistributed.

Because the school, through the grant, is funding the breakfast program, McCarthy said it has helped relieve some of the pressure from her hot lunch budget.

Although the hot lunch budget is funded by the FCSS and is further augmented by a nominal $2.75 fee per lunch, McCarthy, before the breakfast program, still made sure she had an assortment of food, the aforementioned, cereal, fruit and granola bars, all of which came out of the hot lunch program. Currently the hot lunch serves about 170 students, of which 38 are subsidized by FCSS.

“I usually have to fill the fruit basket, in the school’s office, where students go when they need a daily snack, and fruit is expensive.”

Adding the challenge in keeping the program going is the increasing cost of food. McCarthy noted all the food for both of the programs are purchased from local businesses, which do their best to give her deals, but she still has to be very smart in her shopping.

“I have to be smart about shopping and look for sales, to make the money we do have go as far as possible. Without donations from the public I don’t think the we would be able to continue, but thankfully the people in Barrhead are very generous,” she said.

In addition to receiving monetary donations, McCarthy often receives produce from people’s garden and on one occasion, a side of beef, which was shared with the Food Bank. McCarthy also organizes fundraisers throughout the year and takes on catering jobs with the proceeds being invested in the program.

For more information or to donate to the Hot Lunch program contact Barrhead and District FCSS at 780-674-3341.