North Penn Nutrition Services awarded $85K grant to enhance curbside meal pick-up program
(L-R): Andrea Stewart, SNS Secretary; Melissa Froehlich, Coordinator of SNS; Jonathan Kassa, NPSD Board of School Director.
LANSDALE – The North Penn School District is thrilled to announce that its department of School Nutrition Services (SNS) was recently awarded a grant of $85,000 from Share Our Strength to support critical work in ending childhood hunger through the district’s free curbside meal pick-up program during COVID-19.
The grant was provided by Share Our Strength as part of its No Kid Hungry campaign, a movement of teachers, chefs, community leaders, parents, lawmakers and CEOs with a shared belief: no kid in America should go hungry. NPSD School Nutrition Services Coordinator Melissa Froehlich applied for the grant in early November.
Funds from the grant will be used to purchase a refrigerated box truck to incorporate in the district’s curbside meal pick-up program. This program offers free breakfast and lunch bundles to all children 18 and under. To date, the district has provided more than 742,400 curbside meals to students in the North Penn community since the government shutdown of schools due to COVID-19 in March of 2020.
The refrigerated truck will assist North Penn’s SNS department in transporting meals across the district to curbside pick-up sites. It will also allow the district to deliver to more locations within the North Penn community to families who are unable to visit distribution sites. This mobility will help NPSD close the gap to food insecure families who do not have a means of transportation to curbside locations.
“When we switched back to offering a hybrid option to our students this fall, our transportation department was no longer able to help us deliver meals. Unfortunately, we had to discontinue the delivery model,” said Froehlich. “With our own refrigerated truck, we will be able to start delivering meals again, and even open it up to more families based on their need.”
And though it’s hard to imagine a world without COVID-19 programs in place, the refrigerated box truck will still find plenty of use in the future through various programs that North Penn’s SNS department provides, such as its Summer Food Service Program.