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Spectrum Health Employees: MLK Day Of Service

The Kids’ Food Basket weekly provides sack suppers to nearly 7,000 kids. Officials there say about 50,000 children living in Kent, Muskegon and Ottawa counties don’t get enough food. 

As part of the Martin Luther King Jr.  “Day of Service” activities, a group of Spectrum employees spent some time helping out at Kids’ Food Basket as their way of giving back.

"We are packing snow peas for the kids for snacks. They were already weighed, and they were weighed before so we know how many to put in, that makes an ounce.  But we’re doing a little bit more.. some are small. Having a good time. Laughter."

Laughter echoed throughout the large warehouse space as Spectrum Health employees got out of the office to lend a hand.

A steady stream of zip lock bags opened down an assembly line of workers.

“We love the Kid's Food Basket, we’ve done it for a couple of years.  And what a great program and when you listen to all the kids they feed,  and all the donations they get with all this fresh food, it’s amazing.”

More than 7,000 kids a week benefit from the sack lunches, put together with the help of volunteers.  Like those participating in the MLK Day of Service, which extended throughout the week. 

Here’s Kids’ Food Basket founder, Mary Kay Hood Hood:

“Definitely, the volunteers are the backbone of our service, to the kids, and it’s wonderful how community embraces mission to be able to help us attack childhood hunger.”

The spirit of laughter, song and giving filled the room.

And for one group of volunteers, it’s blossoming into more than just one day of service.

“We’ve decided we’re going to make this a department monthly thing, including myself, four members of our team, so we’re going to do this on a monthly basis, we decided.”

Jennifer is an award winning broadcast news journalist with more than two decades of professional television news experience including the nation's fifth largest news market. She's worked as both news reporter and news anchor for television and radio in markets from Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo all the way to San Francisco, California.
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