We are joined by Nicole Hansen, District Executive Director of Community Engagement and Youth Development at the YMCA of Greater Grand Rapids. Tell our listeners about food distribution programs at the YMCA and how they have contributed to children’s health during this time.
“Our food service department actually provides meals year round to the schools within our community that have a significant number of children that are on free or reduced meal programs and so we were ready to understand and learn how we can step into and distribute emergency meal sacks to our community as soon as we knew that schools were potentially going to close.
We worked at restructuring how we operated our kitchen to what was typically a banquet style service program to a meal sack program. We are wrapping up seventh week now of providing meals and by the end of the week we will have surpassed about 50,000 meals. “