During the COVID pandemic, the Pagosa Springs Rotary Club actively continues to serve our community and those most in need. The Rotary Club’s “Feed Our Children” program was established nine years ago by Rotarians Jo Bridges and Lassie Olin to meet the needs of children in elementary school who frequently came to school on Mondays and reported to their teachers that they were hungry over the weekend. Often these children utilized the free and reduced food program at the Pagosa Springs Elementary school during the week but were left without food support over the weekend.
When school suddenly switched to on-line this spring due to the pandemic, we had to quickly adapt our food model. For the past nine years, Rotarians have purchased large quantities of food and stored it in a food pantry, and then each week we would pack backpacks for individual families. On Fridays we would transport the backpacks to the elementary school and at the end of the school day Rotarians would hand out the backpacks to each child.
Fortunately, when the COVID related changes occurred in the local school, the school district decided to continue to provide daily breakfasts and lunches to those families in need. The Rotary Club has been able to work with the school transportation department, who agreed to deliver our weekend food via the school bus routes, as they were doing for the daily school food delivery. Rotarians have continued to serve the same families who had been in the program when the school closed.
Our communities’ economic strain continues, so when the school district received funds to be able to deliver food Monday through Friday throughout the summer, the Pagosa Springs Rotary Club jumped on board too. We reduced our volunteers to only three people working each week, two packing and one taking the bags to the bus barn. By doing this we were able to work in entirely separate areas safely. Currently, the Rotary “Feed Our Children” backpack program is serving 58 children weekly.
One of our big challenges has been the availability of shelf-stable foods during the pandemic. Many factors cause problems for our Rotary club to secure adequate food for the backpack program. We believe that general food system distribution issues, as well as a high demand for food by our local food banks coupled with many individuals who over-shop has contributed to the program’s ongoing food scarcity.
During our summer program, we have generally shopped locally and online and have experienced increasing food prices. Increased food costs and our inability to have our typical food collection boxes around the community, has driven the “Feed Our Children” program costs up substantially.
As summer winds down, and the structure of the school is changing again, we are not sure what the program will look like exactly in the coming months. What we do know is that we will adapt the Rotary “Feed Our Children” program as warranted, to serve families in need.