As a community St. James’ has a history of reaching out in our community. We serve dinners and help with the kids’ club at Sunrise Village, we support Sacred Space, we collect school supplies and gift cards for shoes and help families being re-homed. We want to demonstrate our faith in our community and sometimes we need to seek new ways to do that. Late in 2016 that desire and ability to help came together with a new idea as to how we might reach out to help others.
A parishioner came forward with an idea to see whether schools locally had children unable to have lunches because of their ability to pay. You may have seen cases in the press where children go without lunch because their family cannot afford to pay but are above the level of income to receive free or reduced price lunches. With the help of other members of the parish who have contacts in the right places I was able to meet with the head of Child Nutrition Services in Fremont and with our Superintendent of Schools, Dr Morris. Fremont Unified School District works hard to make sure all families who qualify for lunches receive them but they are aware of families who complete paperwork but due to the levels of income set by the state fail to qualify for assistance. One case this year was a family who earned $27 more per year than the limit to receive lunches which will cost $14 a day for their 4 children! While the district does endeavour to do what it can to help many families to run into debt on their school lunch account and children are provided with a restricted meal until families are able to pay.
St. James’ does have a general outreach fund available for projects outside of our doors. The Vestry decided to donate $2,000 to help pay off school lunch debt in Fremont. The district have initially used $681.36 to settle the debt of 179 students at 3 local schools, Cabrillo Elementary, Grimmer Elementary and Olivera Elementary. Funds will now be applied to the debt in other schools identified as in need and so will continue to help children in our district.
We were invited to attend a School board meeting in February to receive a Declaration of Thanks for our donation and you may well have seen the social media posts highlighting the donation. The declaration is hanging in the Parish Hall if you would like to read it. While it is nice to receive thanks my greater hope for the attention we have received for this donation is that it reminds us of the impact we can have and that it shines a light for others on the ways we can all have an impact on our community. The vestry will continue to look for ways to serve our community using our outreach fund. If you want to make an donation in addition to your pledge to be used in this type of work just put it in an envelope or write on the memo line of your check – ‘Special Interest: General Outreach’.
Many thanks to all who made this project possible including the Vestry, Rev. Lori, Jan and Sherea.
~ Jan Scrutton, Children’s Minister