Superior YMCA’s snack drive looks to help kids not go hungry

No one wants a child to go hungry, but with help from the community, Superior’s YMCA hopes to end child hunger. The Superior YMCA is hosting a snack drive for to help provide kids with healthy and nutritious snacks.

Last year, Superior’s YMCA made the change from a school supply drive to a snack drive. Hannah Bourgalt, the Marketing and Event Coordinator, said last year they raised over 230 pounds of food. But she hopes to exceed that this year.

“Talking with a teacher from Northern Lights, we discovered that a lot of teachers will spend their own money on snacks for students.” Bourgalt said. “A lot of students will be hungry throughout the day.”

According to Feeding America, there’s a food insecurity rate of 12.2% for kids in Wisconsin. Which means more than 1,000 kids are going hungry during the year.

“Hunger can really affect kids later in their life. So it can increase anxiety, it can increase like mental health problems, and then also physical problems, too.”

The Superior YMCA’s snack drive starts August 1st and will end on August 28th for food donations. The food will be donated to the Superior School district.

Principal Ryan Haroldson of Great Lakes Elementary School said the number of kids without homes attending grew in the last year. However, with community programs like the Superior YMCA snack drive, can help address child hunger outside of the school year.

“School supplies are important too, but we seem to have plenty of that stuff when kids come in and pretty readily available.” Principal Haroldson said. “I think during the summer, the work that they’re doing with the food is even more important because we lose those kids over the summer.”

Some of the non-perishable, healthy snack items you can donate are Individual Fruit Cups, Individual Applesauce Cups, Boxes of Raisins, individual bags of Goldfish/Animal Crackers, Granola Bars, and pretzels.

“I’m just grateful for what the YMCA is doing. And we’re always looking for partnerships and people to work with in the community to support our students. It does take a village to raise all of our kids.”

For more information about the Superior’s YMCA snack drive you can look here. For other stories happening in Superior you can look here.