A partnership formed through the City of Winston-Salem’s Think Orange campaign is providing weekend meals to 280 children during the summer. The Forsyth Backpack Program and Ezekiel A.M.E. Zion Church are working together to deliver food to kids enrolled in summer day camps at five city recreation centers and three additional sites.
Each Friday, children receive a backpack containing four shelf-stable meals—two for Saturday and two for Sunday—according to Carol Templeton, president of the Forsyth Backpack Program.
The collaboration began after Templeton met Rosemary Stimpson, who oversees Ezekiel A.M.E. Zion Church’s summer feeding program, at Mayor Allen Joines’ second Think Orange Roundtable on Combating Hunger in April. The church has operated its summer feeding program for 14 years.
Templeton explained, “They were already delivering meals during the summer – during the weekdays – but they did not have coverage for the weekends. Forsyth Backpack was looking to expand into a summer program but had no means for distribution.”
Stimpson said, “I told her that if she could get them packed, we have three vans that could distribute them. So we started exploring how we could work together.”
Following their meeting, Forsyth Backpack received a grant from BB&T to purchase shelf-stable weekend meals from Second Harvest Food Bank. Bank employees volunteered to help package the meals into backpacks with four meals each. In total, 1,736 backpacks were prepared for distribution by Ezekiel over the course of the summer.
The first round of backpacks was distributed on June 21 at five city recreation centers, Rolling Hills and Piedmont Park apartments, and Ezekiel A.M.E. Zion Church. These eight locations represent less than a third of the 29 sites served by Ezekiel during weekdays.
“We tried to pick the sites with the greatest need,” Stimpson said.
Templeton added, “We figure that we need to start somewhere, and (29 sites) was too big a chunk to bite it all off at once. So we’re using this as a pilot project to see how it works.”
The Think Orange campaign was launched last August after Winston-Salem received a grant from the National League of Cities aimed at expanding federal nutrition programs locally.
The campaign involves several organizations addressing hunger issues in Winston-Salem, including local schools’ nutrition programs, Second Harvest Food Bank, Help Our People Eat, Cobblestone Farmers Market and city recreation centers serving as feeding sites.
Mayor Joines has hosted two Think Orange roundtables with business and community leaders to increase awareness and support for these efforts.
“Really,” Templeton said, “this partnership was not going to come about but for the Think Orange campaign. Because I never would have met Rosemary. And that’s what the Think Orange campaign is, to get people in the community to start talking to each other to come up with creative solutions about hunger.”
Winston-Salem operates under a City Council system with eight members representing wards and a mayor elected citywide (official website). The municipal government oversees public services within its boundaries in North Carolina (official website).
For more information about Think Orange or related initiatives in Winston-Salem supporting economic development and community growth (official website), visit their website.
