Nearly 80 people gathered in a warehouse on a cold Tuesday night in Cheyenne just before the holiday school break. In a little over an hour, the group of volunteers filled 1,150 green tote bags with enough food to help feed children experiencing food insecurity over the two-week break.
The Tuesday bag fill events happen weekly at the Friday Food Bag Foundation’s warehouse, ensuring many students who rely on getting nourishment at school have food when school is out of session for the weekend, holidays, and summer break.
Since it began in 2007, the number of totes the Friday Food Bag Foundation fills weekly has grown significantly.
“I believe they were at 50 bags [per week] when it started, and then it grew very quickly up to 1,150 bags prepared every single week during the school year,” said Amanda Santee, co-vice president of the foundation’s board of directors.
The bags are filled with shelf-stable items and delivered by volunteer drivers to schools around Cheyenne with which Friday Food Bag Foundation has connected and school social workers have identified children in need of food. On this particular holiday event, drivers were lined up outside to pick up the extra-large bags for delivery the next day.
“This is the Christmas break bag where we basically tripled the number of items in the bag with the idea that during the two-week time frame when kids are not in school, they are also not receiving other assistance they might get,” said Amanda. “So this hopefully supplements [the kids’ nourishment] to a greater degree than our usual weekend bag.”
Much of the food comes from Food Bank of Wyoming, which the foundation only recently started working with directly. Positive results were immediate.
“We were in a really tough spot where we were looking at our budget and almost priced ourselves out,” said Amanda, noting that the cost per bag had risen to $9 each prior to connecting with the Food Bank. “We really had to make a change.”
A board member suggested getting in touch directly with Food Bank of Wyoming.
“Once that conversation started, we knew right away that it would be a game changer,” Amanda recalled. “Now, we’ve reduced the price of each bag of food by nearly 65%, which means we can put more items in our bags, and higher quality items, but at a third of the cost.”
The Friday Food Bag Foundation originated at the Element Church in Cheyenne as its own organization. According to the church’s outreach ministry director, Dave Marlin, the church originally loaned the foundation its space and sometimes helped fill bags with food from the church’s pantry, which is also a Hunger Relief Partner of Food Bank of Wyoming. Today, the foundation is located in its own building.
Element Church’s food pantry serves some 300 families each week, and Dave calls their partnership with Food Bank of Wyoming essential.
“It’s critical,” he said. “It allows us an opportunity to buy food at discounted rates and sometimes even receive free items. It just plays right into us being able to provide quality food with nutritional value in our regular pantry giveaways that we do each Sunday. It’s phenomenal.”
James Fisher and his wife, Holly, have been volunteering with Friday Food Bag Foundation for three years. James retired from the Air Force a few years back and wanted to spend his extra time helping his community.
“They give out food to children from elementary to high school, so I think that’s a worthy cause,” he said. “We’ve got a system down; there can be anywhere from 35 to 65 people here, and we can usually fill about 1,300 bags in an hour or so. All of this couldn’t be done without community support, and we have a lot here.”
