The unrest in Ferguson, Missouri has delayed the start of the 2014-15 school year. As a result, public school children who would normally be receiving free lunches are left without food options.
Enter Julianna Mendelsohn, a fifth-grade teacher in Bahama, North Carolina, who has raised over $130,000 to feed students from low-income families in Ferguson until schools reopen on Aug. 25.
“As the world watches the events unfolding in Ferguson, many people have thought ‘how can I help?'” writes Mendelsohn on her fundly.com page. “As a public school teacher, my first thought is always about the children involved in any tragic situation like this. When I found out school had been canceled for several days as a result of the civil unrest, I immediately became worried for the students in households with food instability. Many children in the US eat their only meals of the day, breakfast and lunch, at school. With school out, kids are undoubtedly going hungry.”
Mendelsohn is right. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Ferguson-Florissant School district is considered high-poverty with 68 percent of the district’s 11,000 students qualifying for free and reduced-price lunches last year. That’s not including those who never filled out the paperwork.
The district was set to start a federal program that allowed all students to receive free and reduced-price lunches. All the money raised on Mendelsohn fund-raising campaign page will go to feeding the kids in Ferguson via the St. Louis Area Foodbank.
Click here to donate.