Today we went to Springfield, Tennessee, where we worked with the program TNKids Nutrition. TNKids specializes in providing underprivileged school-aged children with food to eat for the weekend, among other programs. We left early in the morning to meet with Don King, one of the founders. Throughout Don's career he saw the need for this program, and after retiring organized the organization with the help of a few others.
At the organization's warehouse, we prepared over 500 bags to be sent out to eight schools around the area. We quickly learned an efficient process to pack all the foods into the bags that would be distributed to the schools. We were able to follow Don around most of the county and see some of the beautiful back roads.
For kids that might not have food for the weekend, the meals will be greatly appreciated. Sometimes we over-analyze foods and even take for granted how fortunate we are that we have food to eat, while others are struggling to be able to have a meal at all.
After the bags were packed, we distributed the bags to the schools. It was nice to be able to hear the staff at the school talk a little bit about the impact that this organization has on the lives of the children. While packing bags and distributing food seemed like small tasks, the rewards and impact are tremendous. Before returning to our awesome church on Vandy's campus, we went and got some killer ice cream at Jenni's.
Tomorrow we will be returning to Springfield and helping with another program that TNKids has organized. This program will work to provide after-school snacks to the children that participate in various programs including tutoring, music, art, and other enrichment activities. We will also be visiting the local schools of Springfield and we look forward to seeing the difference between the city and county schools because of recent attempts to rezone the area, which makes children go to different schools.
Signing off,
Arais and Hannah
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