Participants to raise awareness about childhood hunger

Going without anything to eat for 78 hours sounds challenging, doesn't it? Yet that is exactly what thousands of children in Lee County are faced with each weekend.

In January, Community Cooperative Ministries, Inc., the umbrella agency for the Soup Kitchen and Food Pantry, Meals on Wheels, Senior Transportation, the Montessori Preschool of Dunbar and Family and Homeless Services, began working with the United Way and Orange River Elementary principal Holly Bell to send backpacks full of food home each Friday for over 700 hungry children. However, the need continues to rise.

That is why CCMI and local businesses and community participants are committing to the NoFood4You weekend on April 24-26. This weekend-long challenge is aimed at raising awareness and funds for local children and their families.

At lunchtime on Friday, April 24, designated participants will join children at Orange River Elementary and Sunshine Elementary for lunch. The participants, including The News-Press reporter Francesca Donlan, ABC-7 anchor Len Jennings and others, will eat a typical school lunch that is served in the cafeterias. The participants will then attempt to go without anything else to eat until they gather together again on Monday morning for school breakfast.

Participants also plan to use traditional and social media outlets including newspress. com and ABC-7.com as well as Facebook, Twitter and blogs to record and share their experiences throughout the four-day challenge.

The hopes is that this event will truly raise awareness and aid for the growing number of schools that are facing this epidemic. Most of the 65 Lee County Public Schools are seeing a sharp rise in the rates of free and reduced lunches as parents are losing jobs and joining the ranks of the food insecure for the first time. The rate of free or reduced lunch has climbed over 50 percent in most schools and as high as 97 percent in schools located in some of the hardest hit areas of the county.

CCMI serves Fort Myers and the greater Lee County area, including Bonita Springs, Cape Coral and Lehigh Acres. The Soup Kitchen serves a noontime meal six days a week to men, women, and children in a traditional soup kitchen setting. In addition, CCMI prepares and delivers nutritious packaged meals and beverages for the homebound hungry, offers a food pantry that provides emergency groceries to families in need and two nutritious meals a day for the children in their childcare center. CCMI also partners with Wake Up America, the Harry Chapin Food Bank, Family Health Centers, Goodwheels and Senior Friendship Centers. CCMI is a United Way agency.

Anyone who is interested can take the challenge and participate by registering online at ccmileecounty.com. Donations can me made at www.ccmileecounty.com or by calling Community Cooperative Ministries, Inc. at 332-SOUP (7687).