New Haven Independent

City and school officials and managers from Stop&Shop’s 13 stores in New Haven County lined up before a table of healthful, single-serve food items in the cafeteria of Mauro-Sheridan School on Fountain Street Tuesday to fill plastic bags with the goodies. On Friday the bags will be placed directly into the backpacks of kids who need food to make it through the weekend. They report to a central location in their school to pick up the food; it’s done discreetly so as not to embarrass them.

Nancy Carrington (pictured with schools Superintendent Reginald Mayo), executive director of the Connecticut Food Bank, said the program began in September of 2006 in New Haven. It now serves 206 children from Mauro-Sheridan, Katherine Brennan, Wexler-Grant, Hill Central and Troup Magnet. About 1,000 students from elementary through high school are being served in 14 school districts around the state. The food bank’s director of programs, Kate Walton, estimates that 30,000 bags of food will be distributed this year.

So what’s in the bags? Arrayed on the table were low-sugar cereals Cheerios and Kix, low-fat chocolate milk, juice, soup and stew, and applesauce and shortbread-style cookies. To ensure nutrition and uniform allotments, all the food was purchased, not donated.

That’s where Stop&Shop comes in. Faith Weiner, the head of charitable giving and public affairs for the Quincy, Mass.-based chain, said the $135,000 over three years given to the food bank is part of a $1.5 million grant to buy food for needy children across its coverage area, from New Hampshire to New Jersey.

Posing with the check are, left to right, John Stobierski, regional vice president of Stop&Shop, New Haven public schools food service director Tim Cipriano (who recently joined the board of the food bank), Mayor John DeStefano, Weiner, and Carrington.

Participating children are identified by a teacher or other adult at their school, and Carrington said once that happens, any siblings in other participating schools are also included in the program. Asked if the program could expand if more than 200 children (out of about 20,000 in the district) are identified in need, Carrington said the food bank would need additional funding to do that.

Students eligible for this program are also eligible for free breakfast and lunch. That helps a lot on school days, but the weekend’s a long time to go without adequate food. Similarly, many of the kids who get free meals at school are stuck during the summer, so the food bank initiated Summer Suppers this year to feed young teens who dropped into the Elks Club, in the Dixwell neighborhood, where the program was housed.

The new study, released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, showed that last year 49 million Americans, including 17 million children, were at risk of not having enough food to eat. That’s one in four children.

Superintendent Mayo said several pre-requisites must be met before young people can learn in school. One is getting adequate rest; another is a quiet place to study at home; good health; “and they need to be well nourished. Otherwise, young people will be distracted in school, disruptive, impatient, and all of those things lead to poor academic performance.” He thanked the food bank and Stop&Shop for making the program possible.

Cipriano (pictured at top of story filling a bag) said, “The statistics are staggering; 24 percent of the people in New Haven live below the poverty level. In order for us to end hunger by 2015, we all need to work together.”