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Emergency nutrition grant being used carefully

Krystal Fehrenbach, a community education liaison for the South East Cornerstone Public School Division, made a brief online presentation to their board members on May 20 during their afternoon online business session.
Cornerstone

Krystal Fehrenbach, a community education liaison for the South East Cornerstone Public School Division, made a brief online presentation to their board members on May 20 during their afternoon online business session.

Fehrenbach said the nutrition grant they received from the Breakfast Club of Canada, was in the amount of $19,000 this year, in the form of a COVID-19 emergency funding arrangement. With that assistance being made available, she said parents were invited to reach out to schools for a continuation of some aid for personal nutrition needs.

She said after some discussion regarding disbursements, it was agreed that grocery gift cards from local grocery stores was the best route to take in dispensing the funds in $50 portions.

“The purchases are made within the communities they live in, or near, and prohibit the purchase of such things as alcohol or tobacco products,” Fehrenbach said.

The initial offer and response resulted in 248 families receiving the gift cards and that absorbed $12,400 of the total grant funds. The remaining $6,600 has been left to distribute as more families are identified. In return, the schools collect data to enable them to file a final report to the Breakfast Club of Canada. 

She said community liaison personnel were used to ensure the safe delivery of the cards to be used for groceries only.

“If any family received a gift card and then decided they didn’t need it, they were asked to use it to pay it forward to a family they feel might use it,” Fehrenbach said.

The first set of gift cards went out in mid-May and she said the final identification of families who could use the cards, would be made by the end of June.

The board members thanked Fehrenbach for the report and said they definitely approved of the idea of using local grocery stores for the gift cards as opposed to more central big box retail outlets that would not be as handy to reach for many card recipients.