Harvest Bounty adapted when pandemic arrived

By TAYLOR BROWN

tbrown@yourmvi.com

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced families, businesses and nonprofit organizations to adapt.

But for the Charleroi Area Harvest Bounty Program, it has taught volunteers to preserver. 

The program, offered through the “No Kid Hungry” initiative, supplies food to more than 300 students in the district on weekends and holiday breaks.

When students were sent to virtual classrooms in March, volunteers were forced to find creative ways to make sure students had the food they needed while at home. 

Teacher Kathy Franks, who helps to lead the program, said the group was ready to meet the challenge. 

“The pandemic absolutely changed the way we had to do things,” Franks said. 

In a traditional school year, life skills students fill bags with nonperishable breakfast and lunch food, fruit and snacks that students in grades K-8 take home each Friday.

Without students in the classroom, volunteers had to come up with a way to get the food to students at home.

“We were able to piggyback with the lunch program, which was also providing meals to students for the week,” Franks said. “We shifted, started packing our bags different and arranged enough volunteers to get them out to the sites for parents to pick up. The cafeteria provided school day meals and we made sure the weekends were taken care of.”

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