{"id":1373,"date":"2019-08-15T13:29:32","date_gmt":"2019-08-15T17:29:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=1373"},"modified":"2019-08-15T13:29:45","modified_gmt":"2019-08-15T17:29:45","slug":"no-child-goes-hungry-kidspack-strives-to-bridge-that-gap-by-simply-taking-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2019\/08\/15\/no-child-goes-hungry-kidspack-strives-to-bridge-that-gap-by-simply-taking-action\/","title":{"rendered":"No Child Goes Hungry – kidsPACK strives to bridge that gap by simply taking action"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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There are disadvantaged children all around us today that go\nhungry every day in Polk County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We just don\u2019t often hear about this issue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While subsidized school breakfast and lunch programs are in\nplace during public school hours, what happens at mealtime for these very same\nchildren evenings, weekends and over the summer months?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

kidsPACK strives to bridge that gap by simply taking action.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Randy Browning founded kidsPACK<\/a> following a long history of charitable volunteer work with the Salvation Army, United Way, and Project Care Outreach, as well as several other charitable organizations. The formation of kidsPACK was inspired after learning of the growing number of homeless children suffering in hunger and threatened by hopelessness in our neighborhoods today. For Browning, the heartfelt calling to help is simple, build a solution to help children and the people in the community will come to the rescue. \u201cI started kidsPACK for one reason \u2013 to feed kids. kidsPACK is the direction in my life and an answer to why I am here\u201d stated Browning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a mission to help make sure that no child goes hungry\nkidsPACK is a non-profit organization supported by local community leaders and\nvolunteers that are committed to improving the lives and opportunities of\nchildren. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When this initiative was started before the 2011-2012 school year, kidsPACK fed 449 homeless or hungry children in 31 Polk County public schools. \u00a0This last school year 2018-2019, kidsPACK provided support to 68 schools in Polk County and serves 1712 kidsPACK meals per week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Polk County, there are currently 3,725 registered homeless children in our public schools. There are 150 brick and mortar public schools in Polk County and 89% are Title I schools. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Title I means that in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, it provides additional funding\u00a0for supplemental academic support to schools with a high percentage of poverty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a child to receive approval for the kidsPACK program, the\nchildren are identified by the school or administration.  The children\nmust either be registered within the homeless division of the school district\nor has been identified by a school administrator or teacher as coming to school\nunprepared to learn because they have not eaten. Once the need is identified,\napproval is based on funding availability and a child will not be added unless\nfunding is available for the entire school year. Although funding is sometimes\nlimited, kidsPACK will make every effort to feed every child identified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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An everyday kidsPACK backpacks are turned into a food\ntransportation module stocked with nutritious, child-friendly and easy to\nprepare food for children to eat over the weekend and times when they are away\nfrom school. We pack non-perishable containerized items like ravioli, fruit\ncups, trail mix and portable snacks like granola bars and pop-tarts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want to make an impact in your community and especially a child\u2019s life, kidsPACK is looking to broaden our scope of children this year and would appreciate your support through food donations or your time as a volunteer<\/a>. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can feed a child through the year for $300.00 that includes 2 breakfast\u2019s, 2 lunches and 2 dinners over each weekend during the school year and the summer program. Pdf donation form click here<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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All donations<\/a> to kidsPACK are greatly appreciated and are tax-deductible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you would like to bring the kidsPACK program to the schools in your community, please email\u00a0info@kidspack.org<\/a>. website at www.kidspack.org<\/a> phone 863-272-7927<\/span> <\/span> 3725 Frontage Road North\u00a0 Suite 1 Lakeland, FL 33810 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Excerpts for this article are from Cindy S Adams and Patty Strickland. Kid Pack Inc. (dba kidsPACK) is a non-profit organization and operates exclusively for the disadvantaged children under the recognition and guidelines of the Internal\u00a0Revenue Service. Gift Givers\u00a0# CH35308<\/strong>. Helping those who cannot help themselves <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are disadvantaged children all around us today that go hungry every day in Polk County. We just don\u2019t often hear about this issue. While subsidized school breakfast and lunch… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"9","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}