Many adults can identify with the challenges of trying to focus on work tasks when they haven’t had breakfast or skipped lunch.
Lisle Reed, the coordinator with Whole Child Initiatives at Adams 12 Five Star Schools, wants people to imagine the same situation but for children with growing bodies and developing brains.
“They can enter a classroom with everything they need. They can have the very best teachers with the very best curriculum,” Reed said, “but if they don’t have food it is not possible for them to access the learning in the way that their peers can.”
The Denver Post Season To Share is the annual holiday fundraising campaign for The Denver Post and The Denver Post Community Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Grants are awarded to local nonprofit agencies that provide life-changing programs to help low-income children, families and individuals move out of poverty toward stabilization and self-sufficiency. Visit seasontoshare.com for more information.
That’s where Food for Hope, a 2024 Season to Share program participant, comes in.
The nonprofit organization started as a big idea of an Adams County church pastor Ruben Villarreal a decade ago. Now, its weekend food bags, “school fuel” snack program and dispersed food pantries combined to serve more than 4,000 kids and members of those students’ households from four school districts in that northeast metro county.
“We believe that each child should have an equal opportunity to succeed and grow in a healthy way regardless of their circumstances,” said Emily Stromquist, Food For Hope’s executive director since its founding. “As our program has grown, we have found ways to do that more creatively and more comprehensively.”
The dispersed food pantries are a prime example for Stromquist. The nonprofit’s leaders knew in 2019 they wanted to expand the organization’s ability to provide dairy products and other fresh items that wouldn’t keep in their weekend food bags but lacked the facilities to provide their own food bank.
Officials at Northglenn High School had some extra space and offered it up to Food for Hope. That initial pantry operated for only a short time before the COVID-19 pandemic shut it and the school down, Stromquist remembers.
But it was only a temporary setback. When the pantry reopened in 2021, it was an instant success and Food for Hope found that other schools also wanted to offer spaces to serve their families. The nonprofit now has nine pantries in schools or other buildings run by its client districts.
Stromquist knows there is still a significant amount of unmet need among the county’s kids and families. The organization finally moved into its own rented warehouse space in August to allow it to better distribute food items after years of operating in makeshift spaced donated by local churches.
Now it is in the early stages of a two-year fundraising campaign hoping to bring in $2 million to further expand its reach, Stromquist said.
“We have 17 different schools on the waitlist for the various programs,” she said
In 27J Schools, Desiree Quintanilla has seen the needs grow up close. The district’s community and family outreach coordinator said that in the 2023-2024 school year, the district tracked 594 students who met the federal definitions for coming from homeless families. As of this month, that number had increased to 693 kids, she said.
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Ten of the district’s 24 schools receive support through at least one of Food for Hope’s programs. The district also hosts a food pantry at its central Family Resource Center in Brighton.
“I think, honestly, it builds trusting relationships,” Quintanilla said of being able to support families with help from Food for Hope.
Reed, with Adams 12 district, echoed that.
“When you have families and students who know that their schools care that deeply about equitable learning they are more likely to attend school they are more likely to feel that connection and that they belong,” Reed said. “And Food for Hope is an integral part of that in our district.”
Food for Hope
Address: 12132 Grant Circle, Thornton, CO 80241
In operation since 2015
Number of employees: 7
Number of volunteers: 850
Annual budget: $978,000
Number of clients served: Approximately 4,000 students and members of their households per month through all programs