By WKTV Staff
joanne@wktv.org

With more than 11 million U.S. children living gin food insecure homes, hunger is no longer just a city concern.

“People don’t understand or realize that poverty does not have a zip code anymore,” said Cheryl Hondred, founder and CEO of Hand2Hand, a local organization that partners with area churches and schools to provide weekend food to area children. “Actually urbanization has caused people to move into the rural areas, suburbs, so every single school now has students who go home over the weekend, that 68-hour gap in the week, with limited food resources.”

The need for food resources continues to grow, according to Hondred. Hand2Hand works with 111 area churches to help about 6,356 children in 192 schools. Through the program, there are about 5,200 volunteers.

“We are in the places you wouldn’t expect, Rockford, Caledonia, Jenison, Grandville, Hudsonville, Wyoming, Byron Center,” Hondred said, adding that more schools wish to have Hand2Hand in their school.

Hand2Hand’s model is to partner with a local school to provide the weekend food to the students. Hondred said. Hand2Hand works with the church to train members, set up food pantries and organizer foods.

So the biggest challenge for Hand2Hand has been to find churches to partner with to provide the nutritious food to students for the weekends.

Currently the organization is hosting an initiative in school districts of Kentwood, Godwin Heights, and Godfrey-Lee where Hand2Hand is offering seed money to churches to purchase pantry items, shelving, bins and additional food items if the church would be willing to help with a school in one of those districts.

For more about the Hand2Hand program, click on the link above featuring WKTV’s Donna Kidner-Smith talking to Hondred about the program or visit h2hkids.org.