The North Kansas City schools send out regular emails letting parents know about upcoming events and resources that are available in the area. One of the resources the emails list is community food kits available through Feed Northland Kids. Feed Northland Kids is a local organization that helps local families facing food insecurity. I know that nutrition becomes more problematic for many families during the summer. It makes me happy to know that these resources exist within our community! If you have need of this resource the people there are lovely and wonderfully helpful, but did you know that they also accept donations, both monetary and in the form of non-perishable food? My son and I took a special trip to ALDI to pick out some of the higher demand items from their list.
(This is a wonderful activity that gets us out of the house but limits but limits buying items we don’t really need. So it’s like retail therapy with a purpose. He still talks about when we went to Walmart to buy 25 cans of spray cheese (a high value treat for dogs at Wayside Waifs.) we used teamwork to get the cans from the back of a tall shelf!
My partner and I are trying to impart to our child life skills like mindfulness, kindness, and community building and one of the values I wish to teach my son is to acknowledge his privilege and understand it as an opportunity to help others. He seems to be connecting with the concept, like many children his innate sense of fairness means he sees the value in sharing and helping. We talked about how our communities are safer when everybody has the things they need and simple things like contributing to a food drive can make a big difference in lives of our neighbors.
This kiddo was super excited to pick out some Mac n cheese and pop tarts for friends in the community! He even helped me pack up the bags to send along to our friends!
EDITED TO ADD:
We also received a lovely, hand-written ‘thank you’ note from Feed Northland Kids!
