MLK Jr. Day of Service held at Delaware Food Bank
About 40 volunteers from across the state came together for the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service at the Food Bank of Delaware in Milford Jan. 20.
The volunteers, some regulars and some newcomers, packed meal kits for the food bank’s backpack program, which has provided food on a weekly basis to Delaware children in need since 2006.
“One in five [Delaware] children experience food insecurity, and we have over 9,000 kids who participate in the program each week,” said Kim Turner, vice president of communications at the Food Bank.
The kits are delivered by food bank drivers to more than 180 schools, childcare centers and preschools every week, where they are then deposited discreetly by a crisis counselor, school nurse or other school employee into the backpacks of kids who might be at risk of hunger over the weekend.
Individual volunteers, along with those from the Wilmington-based nonprofit Reading Assist, which offers in-school tutoring to K-3 students in the lowest 25% for reading proficiency, and the Dover chapter of Sigma Gamma Rho, a historically African American sorority and service organization, lent their time to the cause.
