At our recent Weekend Food for Kids event, we again packed 1720 bags of nonperishable food in about an hour and delivered them to six Title 1 elementary schools:  three in Fairfax and three in Prince William counties.

Helping to achieve such logistical magic were our members, Dominion Energy employees, Didlake associates, and community volunteers.  Also joining us for the first time was a group of Mechanical Engineering students from George Mason University.  We also provided grocery gift cards to a school in Alexandria, and ‘emergency’ grocery cards to the families of students at the six schools receiving food bags, and to a seventh school.

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As we’ve done previously, we also scheduled our provision of new clothing to coincide with the delivery of the food bags.  We provided 190 items of winter clothing, including winter jackets, hats, gloves, leggings, long-sleeve shirts, and sweatpants, based on input from the schools, if provided.  We also ordered sneakers for some schools and encouraged the other schools to submit their requests, according to their needs and preferred delivery schedules.

Our delivery of nourishing food and warm winter clothing helps ensure that students’ basic needs are met, so they can develop self-confidence.  The smiles of two students who recently received new coats from us say it all.  The boy was very happy with his new jacket and especially liked the soft fleece lining in the hood.