On Friday, December 13th, sixteen Rotarians and friends showed up to pack groceries for our annual Peanut Butter Project at Medford’s Kids Unlimited Academy (KUA) campus. Each student attending KUA is sent home for the holiday break with a jar of peanut butter and healthy snacks. This year our volunteers packed 652 bags.

How it started: The project began in 2017 and is the result of club member Cheryl Harrison’s recognizing a need and her passion to help. Cheryl’s daughter worked at KUA in 2016 and noticed a sad, thin, little boy in her class. Winter break was coming in a few days which meant no regular breakfast, lunch and dinner for him since he was fed at KUA. He had missed a food distribution that week and all he really wanted was a jar of peanut butter to share with his sister. Cheryl’s daughter shared the story with her, and Cheryl reached out to a local food distributor, Food 4 Less, and purchased enough peanut butter for all the kids at KUA that year. After mentioning this story to a fellow Rotarian, it was agreed that this would be an excellent Rotary project and the club took on the project in 2017.

Cheryl has now led this program for 7 years. Over those 7 years, our club has distributed over $25,618 in food. The program has evolved so that now each student attending KUA is sent home for the holiday break not only with a jar of peanut butter but also a bag of fruit and healthy snacks.

Volunteers purchase the peanut butter early and wrap each jar with a ribbon. Additional volunteers share the responsibility of buying the assorted groceries. And lastly, a larger group of volunteers gather together to form a small assembly line to pack the food for distribution.

Thank you to all our volunteers for making this project a success.

News Source : https://rotarydistrict5110.com/2024-peanut-butter-project-is-a-success/