By Staff
December 17th, 2017
BURLINGTON, ON
At the end of the week thousands of students will be out of school and home for the holidays – returning to their classes on January 8th.
Another calendar year behind them and time to think about, talk about and plan for the balance of the school year.
It may well be a year during which the Board of Education closes a school – that decision will become crystal clear in 2018. Lester B. Pearson high school parents are still going door to door drumming up support for a community initiative to somehow keep that school open.
Households with children in school have an attachment to the school there children go to that starts early in the morning and runs through to well into the late afternoon.
At Tom Thomson elementary school the program for students begin at breakfast where there are two programs for students; one run by the YMCA that involves caring for the students and the other a walk in for any student that wants to meet with friends and didn’t catch breakfast at home.
The program is put on by a volunteer group of parents. Some of the students come from households where the family income doesn’t quite cover all the costs – others are students who want to meet with their chums and do what elementary students do these day.
A Regional Police liaison officer spends time at both Tom Thomson and Brant Hills – alternating between the two; parents from the community work as volunteers getting the food ready and serving the students.
Dania Thurman, a parent very active in the campaign to keep Central high school open, is one of the parents that shows up a couple of days a week and spends some time with the 60+ students who show up before she has to scoot off to her full time job.
The students troop into the gym, dropping their knapsacks on the floor and heading for the group of friends they meet up with – cell phones in hand.
The program takes place every day of the week – they have been doing this at Tom Thomson for the past six years.
They feed between 60 to 70 students with the grub coming from Food for Thought a Region wide program that works with elementary and high schools to ensure that every student has access to a proper breakfast.
The Food for Thought history isn’t uncommon; a grassroots group of people who identify a problem and come together to form a solution. In this case, one of the strongest groups you can have behind your cause are the parents that get the job done.
These Parents noticed that not every child at school had food in their lunch box or that many kids had food that didn’t contain enough nutrients to fuel their minds and bodies for learning.
In 1997, the parents came together and formed an advisory committee to oversee the first 6 official Student Nutrition Programs in Halton. Fast forward to 2007, just ten years later, and HFFT became an incorporated, registered, charity with its own Board of Directors and 63 programs.
As of September 2017, HFFT has partner programs in 130 schools across Halton and feeds more than 27,000 students a week. We have over 2,100 volunteers (including 930 students) and dozens of community partners who all work together to feed students in their communities.