Representatives from the Bright Futures Trenton organization presented the program at the Thursday, June 8 meeting of the Trenton Rotary Club, held at the BTC Bank community room in Trenton.
Michael Ormsby presided at the meeting, Dan Wilford gave the prayer, Brian Upton was the sergeant at arms and Jackie Soptic was the program chairman.
Cara McClellan presented information about the Food Pals program that Bright Futures will be initiating this fall to provide food to students in need. The program will replace Backpack Buddies, which had been operated in coordination with the Community Food Pantry of Grundy County and Second Harvest.
McClellan said Food Pals is designed to serve more students than were able to be served by Backpack Buddies, in which only children in grades kindergarten through six could participate. The new program will serve children in preschool through high school and all schools within the county will be eligible to participate.
Students selected for participation will be based on the school free and reduced lunch forms filled out by eligible families. Instead of backpacks being sent home with students, boxes of food will be distributed for pickup on the third Thursday of each month from a building on 17th Street owned by the Grundy County Health Department and being used for storage of Food Pal items.
McClellan said it has been estimated that around $30,000 will be needed to fund the program this year and both monetary and food donations can be made to Bright Futures. Monetary donations can be sent to Bright Futures at PO Box 593, Trenton, MO or be made through PayPal on the Bright Futures Trenton Facebook page (checks should have Food Pals written on the memo line). One fundraiser has already been held and other fundraisers are planned as well.
Chris Hoffman, another Bright Futures board member, said volunteers will also be needed to help with sorting, packing and distributing food. Mrs. McClellan said food distribution will take place during the school year, August through May.
During the business meeting, members voted to have new identification badges made to replace ones currently being used.
The program for the June 15 meeting will be presented by Sophia Currie, who recently returned from Spain after spending a year as a Rotary Exchange student.
