Aid and Relief for Distressed Communities
We engage in fighting child hunger and poverty in food insecure homes and offer holistic aid for families in distress.
Some of these compassion ministries include:
- Snack Packs for kids living in food insecure homes
- Mobile food pantry
- Backpacks and school supplies for low-income neighborhoods
- Annual drives for winter coats and heaters
- Clothing and hygiene supplies for needy families
- Basic care for those who are in unfortunate circumstances
- Mobilizing serve teams for repair, reconstruction, and revitalization projects
If you’d like to donate items for our aid and relief efforts or child poverty alleviation programs, here are some of the particular items we could use:
- Food and healthy snacks (year round)
- Water bottles (year round)
- School supplies and backpacks (August and January)
- Electric heaters (winter months)
- Winter coats and warm clothes (winter months)
- New socks and underwear (year round)
- Hygiene items (year round)
Alleviating child hunger… feeding Chattanooga children.
We fight child hunger by providing a mobile food pantry through our neighborhood outreach in low-income communities and our Snack Pack program for kids living in food insecure homes.
The Snack Pack program feeds children of families who largely depend on school lunches as their primary source of food. These kids are most likely to go home on the weekends to an empty pantry.
School children are able to receive lunches through the Free or Reduced Lunch Program, providing them with nutritious meals on school days. However, many of these children have little or no nutritious food at home to eat during the weekends.
This program provides nutritious food items that can easily be prepared by children when they are home alone, such as juice boxes, applesauce, raisin packs, granola bars, Easy Mac, boxes of cold cereal, peanut butter crackers, fruit snacks, oatmeal, and more.
Volunteers fill the Snack Packs with enough food for the weekend and distribute them to the children after school on Fridays and on special holidays. School counselors and neighborhood liaisons identify children needing this program, and the parents authorize their child’s involvement.
According to USDA statistics, 21% of Tennessee children live in poverty – 20% are in households that experience “food insecurity.” During their early years, children need nutritious food to develop – both physically and mentally. Research also shows that hungry children have poorer mental and overall health, miss more days of school, suffer greater rates of behavioral disorders and are less prepared to learn when they are in school.
Your church, small group, youth group, Sunday School class, office team, or community group could prepare snack packs and we can distribute them in the schools and neighborhoods that we partner with.