Food4Kids Guelph

Food4Kids in Guelph was a Rotary-inspired charity based on the belief that No Child In Our Community Should Go Hungry. The program was established as a joint project of the four Rotary Clubs of Guelph to support severely food-insecure children at local elementary schools. The program provided the registered school kids (referred to the program by their principals) with weekend food bags to take home from school on Fridays, and grocery gift cards sent to their families during school breaks. 

 

It was always Rotary's plan to build a successful program and later hand it off to a suitable agency. After operating and growing the Food4Kids Guelph program for six years, it was successfully handed over to the wonderful Children's Foundation of Guelph and Wellington in July 2024, and renamed as Keep Kids Fed At Home.  Read details and updates on the CFGW website here. 

 

Local Rotarians continue to help with volunteering and fundraising.

 

In late 2017, Rotarians at our club became aware of a local problem that was not yet on our radar. The issue was that school children who lived in severely food insecure families often struggled to get enough food at home on weekends, and arrived famished and unhappy at school on Mondays. We learned that these children depended on getting free food on school days, Monday to Friday, but that weekends (when schools were closed) were a trial of endurance for some children, without having adequate food at home. By "some children" we soon learned that around 500 kids at Guelph elementary schools needed this kind of food support. (Yes, in Guelph.)

 

It's not that parents didn't want to feed their children. It's that they couldn't because they were struggling to make ends meet.

 

We immediately began searching to find one or more local organizations already addressing this issue for Guelph children in need, with the goal of getting Rotary behind them. Sadly, after three months of intense research, we discovered that NO ONE in Guelph was addressing this weekend food shortage for children. 

 

"Someone" had to do "Something" about this issue, and that became Guelph Rotarians.

 

Taking a lead role, the Rotary Club of Guelph reached out to the other three Rotary Clubs in Guelph to let them know about this issue and invited them to work together in easing this problem. Each club instantly agreed and also provided volunteers to join an exploratory committee as well as providing "seed money" to establish a pilot program. All four Rotary Clubs in Guelph as well as the Rotaract Club then continued to work together on this program, year after year! 

 

Not wanting to reinvent the wheel, the exploratory committee found a great weekend food program called Food4Kids that had started about 5 years earlier in Hamilton, Ontario and had quickly spread to other regions such as Halton, Niagara and Waterloo. Food4Kids Ontario was more than happy to freely guide us in establishing a chapter of Food4Kids in Guelph, based on  their model. Guelph began with a local pilot program that was launched in the spring of 2018, followed by the continuation of the program year-round starting September 2018.  

 

One year later, by mid-2019, Food4Kids became registered as an independent charity and affiliated with Food4Kids Ontario and the other Food4Kids agencies in the region, for sharing of best practices. 

 

In March 2018, our pilot program had begun by supporting 43 kids at 3 elementary schools. By the end of our 6th full year of operation (June 2024) we were supporting 500 children at 31 out of Guelph's 39 elementary schools, helping around 245 families, year round. This involved packing and delivering about 18,000 weekend food bags for kids during the school year and mailing grocery gift cards to families during all school holidays. All fundraising and food packing and delivery was undertaken by volunteers, still including many Rotarians, with just one staff member.  

 

Effective July 1st, 2024 CFGW took ownership of the Food4Kids Guelph program and their two Food Security programs were renamed under the title of KEEP KIDS FED: