In Williamston Community schools, 16.2% of students receive free or reduced lunch while at school, but the program does not support students during the weekends or time away from school.
Jeff Gorsline and his wife Heather noticed this gap and founded Weekend Survival Kits 12 years ago.
The organization and its volunteers get together semimonthly to package and send out nutritious foods to schools for their students facing food insecurity to have during non-school hours.
The mission
Gorsline, who also serves as Executive Director, said the foundation of the organization is packaging food and sending it to the schools for distribution, but the true objective goes deeper than just keeping kids fed.
“We do send people food on the weekends, but it’s just a means to our real mission,” Gorsline said. “The idea is to be able to give these kids a chance academically and to let them know that there is somebody who cares about them and wants them to succeed.”
The organization focuses on supplying students with the proper nutrition so that they are able to focus on their academics successfully.
According to the Center for Disease Control, insufficient intake of food is, “associated with lower grades, higher rate of absenteeism, repeating a grade, and an inability to focus among students.”
Volunteer Opportunities
Kyla Parkllan, the director of mid-Michigan operations said the staff of Weekend Survival Kits is a small team, so volunteers are a vital part of the organization.
“There are 30 to 50 volunteers that come twice a month to pack food for anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 kids,” Parkllan said. “We also have the volunteers that come in and pick up the kits to deliver to the kids in schools in the greater Lansing area.”
Volunteers are able to go on the organization’s website to find a sign-up sheet with all the scheduled upcoming volunteering dates.
They offer two different days for volunteer opportunities. Wednesday night, Weekend Survival Kits needs people to come in and package the food for all the students in the program, and then, Thursday morning, the organization needs volunteers to drive to the different schools and drop off the assembled kits.
The community
As of February of 2020 Weekend Survival Kits is serving 4,184 students at 80 different schools.
Cami Shadaker, the Director of Fund Development for the Weekend Survival Kit program, is responsible for acquiring funding for the organization.
“Securing funding is critical to our program,” said Shadaker. “The more money we raise, the more children we can serve.”
Weekend Survival Kits partners with many different organizations, schools, businesses, individuals and churches like Gleaners Community Food Bank, 242 Community Church and Delta Dental. These partnerships help make it possible for the organization to assist as many students as possible.
“We simply are all doing our best to try to help those kids,” said Gorsline. “Without volunteers, there is absolutely no way that this can happen, and that’s what I love about it.”