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Carol Stream, IL —
The warehouse at Carol Stream’s Humanitarian Service Project evokes an aroma of fresh fruit, as if standing in the produce section of a grocery store.
The walls are lined with more than 100 boxes of fruits, vegetables and nonperishable items, including canned goods and juice.
Surrounding the boxes are carts stocked with grocery bags holding frozen meats and breads.
Despite the sweltering 97 degree temperature, about a dozen volunteers and staff are hard at work loading hundreds of pounds of food into cars lined up outside the warehouse waiting to receive food. By the end of the day, nearly 100 low-income local families in nearby communities — including Carol Stream, Bloomingdale, Glendale Heights, West Chicago and Wheaton — will reap the benefits.
For Paul Yambrovich, community outreach coordinator at the Humanitarian Service Project, this is all just part of a day’s work.
According to Yambrovich, the food distribution day, which happens once a month from June to August, is a culmination of a continual collection year-round, money and food donations by working with local businesses, organizations and individuals to support the Feed the Kids program, which is one of several projects the Humanitarian Service Project heads each year.
Yambrovich said now that it’s summer, hundreds of local families are struggling with putting three meals on the table each day now that children are home from school.
“This program is really designed to help families out,” he said. “The families who are in the program really struggle during the summer months.”
According to a 2010 study by the Food and Action Center, 16 percent of low-income children who depend on the federally subsidized National School Lunch Program are eligible to participate in summertime anti-hunger programs.
Humanitarian Service Project co-founder Karole Kettering and her husband, Floyd, started the program from their spare bedroom in their Wheaton home 32 years ago.
Kettering said she was inspired to start the Feed the Kids program in 2004 after reading a magazine article about children going hungry during the summer because their parents are facing budget restraints.
The number of Feed the Kids families the organization has helped has increasingly grown over the years, from 60 families the first year to close to 100 this year.
Last year, the program provided a total of 750 pounds of groceries to about 455 local children. Yambrovich said this year, the organization has about an equal goal, which is based on the amount of funding and donations received year-round.
The warehouse at Carol Stream’s Humanitarian Service Project evokes an aroma of fresh fruit, as if standing in the produce section of a grocery store.
The walls are lined with more than 100 boxes of fruits, vegetables and nonperishable items, including canned goods and juice.
Surrounding the boxes are carts stocked with grocery bags holding frozen meats and breads.
Despite the sweltering 97 degree temperature, about a dozen volunteers and staff are hard at work loading hundreds of pounds of food into cars lined up outside the warehouse waiting to receive food. By the end of the day, nearly 100 low-income local families in nearby communities — including Carol Stream, Bloomingdale, Glendale Heights, West Chicago and Wheaton — will reap the benefits.
For Paul Yambrovich, community outreach coordinator at the Humanitarian Service Project, this is all just part of a day’s work.
According to Yambrovich, the food distribution day, which happens once a month from June to August, is a culmination of a continual collection year-round, money and food donations by working with local businesses, organizations and individuals to support the Feed the Kids program, which is one of several projects the Humanitarian Service Project heads each year.
Yambrovich said now that it’s summer, hundreds of local families are struggling with putting three meals on the table each day now that children are home from school.
“This program is really designed to help families out,” he said. “The families who are in the program really struggle during the summer months.”
According to a 2010 study by the Food and Action Center, 16 percent of low-income children who depend on the federally subsidized National School Lunch Program are eligible to participate in summertime anti-hunger programs.
Humanitarian Service Project co-founder Karole Kettering and her husband, Floyd, started the program from their spare bedroom in their Wheaton home 32 years ago.
Kettering said she was inspired to start the Feed the Kids program in 2004 after reading a magazine article about children going hungry during the summer because their parents are facing budget restraints.
The number of Feed the Kids families the organization has helped has increasingly grown over the years, from 60 families the first year to close to 100 this year.
Last year, the program provided a total of 750 pounds of groceries to about 455 local children. Yambrovich said this year, the organization has about an equal goal, which is based on the amount of funding and donations received year-round.
According to Karole Kettering, the organization has received $25,000 in grant money from several organizations to help make the Feed the Kids program possible.
“These people are so unequipped to be able to handle this during the summer,” she said. “We know that there is poverty out there everywhere. Our goal is to do this other places and not just here.”
This year, nearby grocery chain Caputo’s donated all of the fresh fruit and vegetables while Pepperidge Farm and Panera provided the bread.
However, according to Yambrovich, the difficult economy has affected overall food donations and as a result, donations are down by 15 percent from last year.
Kettering said the Humanitarian Service Project hopes to receive more individual sponsors.
To sponsor a family, the organization charges donors $225 for the year.
To qualify for the program, Yambrovich said DuPage and Kane county officials determine which families are eligible, but it’s usually those at the lowest level of the poverty line.
The 100 families are then chosen by a lottery system from the nearly 700 families who are part of the organzation’s Children’s Birthday Project — a program that provides low-income children with birthday presents.
“We’d love to help 5,000 families, but funding and donations hasn’t allowed us to do that much,” Yambrovich said.
Thanks to the program, Juliana Dulceak said there’s been a huge impact on her family.
Her sister, a Glendale Heights resident, is a single mother of three who has fallen on hard economic times.
Dulceak, who picked up her sister’s food at the June 8 distribution, said her sister has found it difficult to provide her children with nutritious meals during the summer because the children are not receiving meals at school. As a result, she said the Feed the Kids program has helped tremendously.
“It provides food that she might not be able to afford at the end of the week or month,” Dulceak said. “It helps her a lot. Out of the other programs that have helped her out, they do the best. It’s a real blessing that they do this.”
