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ENJOY! Shenandoah County Living APRIL 2017
50,000 breakfasts served
Rich Cooley/Daily Shenandoah County's Community School Breakfast program, which includes a list of generous residents and businesses, has been making sure needy schoolchildren have breakfast before starting their school day.
Community, businesses join forces to ensure students get a morning meal By Sally Voth A generous group of Shenandoah County residents and business people is hungry to help kids in need. Theyʼre ensuring all students in Shenandoah County Public Schools are able to get breakfast, regardless of their ability to pay. The Community School Breakfast Program has been providing free breakfasts to county schoolchildren since the 2009-2010 school year. Founder Fred Hepner Jr. said the idea came after a woman he attended church with told him an unfortunate story from one of the school cafeterias. “This lady that worked at [a] school was telling me about the children not getting breakfast,” he said. “They were getting off the bus and they were hungry, and [she] talked about this one little boy who was hungry and he went through the line twice.” The student didnʼt have any money to pay
and wasnʼt signed up for the free and reduced lunch program, Hepner said. “They dumped his tray twice,” he said. “I didnʼt believe that they could do that. But come to find out, because of regulations and as strict as they were, thatʼs what they had to do.” Hepner decided to see if funds could be raised to cover the cost of breakfast for those children whose parents maybe couldnʼt afford to pay for breakfast, but didnʼt qualify for the free and reduced program, or werenʼt comfortable signing up for it. The Community School Breakfast Program will also pay for anyone who may have forgotten their money on a particular day. “The cafeteria knows that if a child doesnʼt have money or is not on the free and reduced list, then they take it out of this fund,” he said. No one has to sign up to be covered by
the funds, Hepner said. “The good Lord had His hands in it,” he said. “Everything just fell into place so quick. The business people and the people in the community had no idea this was going on, [that] there were kids in Shenandoah County that were that hungry. “It took me about half a day to get the funding to get that thing started. Iʼve had to take some money out of my pocket to do it some, but itʼs not been bad. People have blessed it. To date, weʼve served over 50,000 breakfasts.” The first year, $7,200 was raised, and 5,750 breakfasts were paid for. In the 2015-2016 school year, $11,709 was raised, and 9,367 breakfasts were served with that money. The program was originally just in the elementary schools, but is now available in all of the schools in the Shenandoah County
See BREAKFASTS, Page A2