Donations will help local group feed students in need

By Jason Evans
Staff Reporter

jevans@thepccourier.com

PICKENS COUNTY — For many students, weekends mean staying up later, going out with friends and having fun.

For some, weekends mean going hungry.

For some students, lunch at school on Friday afternoon may be the last time they eat until they return to school on Monday morning.

For the last six years, a small group of dedicated local volunteers have been fighting this problem.

This Sunday, Feed a Hungry Child Pickens County will ask area church congregations to take up a second collection to help them continue to feed hungry students on the weekends.

Just before she retired as principal of A.R. Lewis Elementary School, Kathy Brazinski and her staff began looking at students coming into the health room week after week to see when they were coming in and why they were coming in.

“There were more kids coming to the health room on Monday mornings, and they were hungry,” Brazinski said. “It was mostly Monday mornings. They would say they didn’t have any food.”

Brazinski received a small grant that enabled her school to provide meals for the 15 children in need.

“That last semester, we were able to feed those kids on the weekends,” she said.

Courtesy Photo

Feed a Hungry Child Pickens County volunteers unload food for area students. The food goes home with the students on Fridays.

Milledge Cassell heard about the need at A.R. Lewis and also about a program in the Rock Hill school district that fed students district-wide.

“Milledge Cassell has been the key driver in all of this. He’s been phenomenal,” Brazinski said. “He said to me, ‘Do you think we can get some people together and do this all over Pickens County?’ I said, ‘Well, we can sure try.’”

With that, Feed a Hungry Child Pickens County was born. McKissick Elementary was the first school it served, helping 100 students that first year.

“It has grown,” Brazinski said.

The program, now in its sixth year, currently serves 634 students.

“We have just about increased our numbers by a hundred students a year,” she said.

The program started out with elementary schools. It now serves 15 of the 16 elementary schools in the county.

“Dacusville (Elementary) has chosen to serve their own students,” Brazinski said. “They have a very strong PTA and a church that is funding them.”

In addition to its elementary schools, Feed a Hungry Child Pickens County also serves Pickens Middle School, R.C. Edwards Middle School, Daniel High School and Liberty High School.

“Why we’re not serving everybody is because of the cost,” Brazinski said. “It costs us about $130,000 a year to feed these children.”

Most of the children served are in the poverty range, she said.

The program buys food in bulk from Golden Harvest Food Bank. Volunteers purchase additional food to give to the middle and high school students.

“What they provide is not ample for a middle or high school student,” Brazinski said.

Two volunteers drive to Golden Harvest’s facility in Piedmont to get the food. Thanks to the generosity of Doris Dalton, who donated one of her mini-warehouses, the group has a place to store the food safely and securely.

“We have drivers, our volunteers, who come and pick up the food and also deliver it to the schools,” Brazinski said.

The group works with school guidance counselors and social workers to identify the students in need.

“It’s very discreet,” Brazinski said.

The food, enough to see them through the weekend, is given to the students on Fridays. It costs a little more than $6 to feed each student per weekend, Brazinski said.

The economy’s slow growth means the need is still there.

“We really felt like, with the economy, thinking the economy was getting better, that we would not have so many kids in need, but it has just continuously increased,” Brazinski said.

The reasons students are in need of food are many.

“There were a lot of reasons they weren’t eating,” Brazinski said. “You couldn’t pinpoint just one.”

In some cases, unemployed parents take their children off the program when one parent finds a job, only to return to the program a few weeks later.

“They tell us, ‘We can’t make it on one salary,’” Brazinski said. “It’s not always because the parents are negligent, it’s because the economy is so bad.”

The program has helped attendance increase at county schools.

“One of the issues with students who are at risk, they are often out of school on Fridays,” Brazinski said. “Since Fridays are the day they get their food, attendance has increased.”

This Sunday, May 22, has been designated as Feed a Hungry Child Sunday, Brazinski said.

“We try to reach as many churches as we can to ask them if they would take up a second collection for Feed a Hungry Child,” she said. “Anybody who wants to make a donation can make it to Feed a Hungry Child Pickens County, P.O. Box 1573, Pickens, SC, 29671.”

Donors will receive a receipt for their donation.

“We are a 501(c)3,” Brazinski said. “90 percent of what we take in goes directly to the kids.”

The program receives no district, state or federal funding, Brazinski said, but rather relies strictly on grants and donations.

She said the group hopes to raise $15,000-$20,000 from this year’s Feed a Hungry Child Sunday.

The program has received grants from Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative, Dabo Swinney’s All-In Foundation, The Reserve at Lake Keowee, Wal-Mart, the Pickens Women’s Association and the Southeast Grocer’s Association.

Since its inception, the program has been run by a nine-member board and several volunteers.

Recently, the group hired Diane Rowe part-time to be a point of contact with the schools, Golden Harvest and the volunteers.

“It’s just been a small group of us, all going in different directions,” Brazinski said. “We just wanted to get the kids fed — that was our goal. Having somebody to help out will be great. We can reach a little wider.”

Volunteers themselves get no reimbursement, Brazinski said.

“They’ve donated their time, talent and treasure,” she said.

For more information or to donate online, visit pickenschildren.com.