Friends Ruth Collins and Rhonda Frost, parents of Mesa Public Schools (MPS) children, saw a need in the community four years ago, and wanted to address it.
What was the need? Not every child in MPS had enough food to eat over the weekend.
AZ Brain Food, a nonprofit organization, was born. This group’s main focus is to provide students with food for the weekend, so they can be ready to learn. Research shows children who are well fed are not as sick, and are better behaved in school.
Here is where AZ Brain Food comes in. This organization provides a weekend food bag for each student a teacher identifies. Healthy, non-perishable, shelf stable, child-friendly and lightweight food is provided. Packages include a pop-top canned good, fruit juice, fruit cup, Easy Mac, cereal, pudding, granola bars, peanut butter or tuna, tortillas and chocolate milk.
In the fall of 2013, AZ Brain Food will service every elementary school. This is quite an accomplishment in four years, since there are 56 elementary schools in Mesa, and these two friends started with two schools in 2009.
Grants, foundations, eagle projects, school drives and donations help provide the food. Volunteers are the key to this organization. Every week during the school year, 60 to 80 volunteers get together at the warehouse to package the 2,000 bags needed.
AZ Brain Food has spread to Fountain Hills, where a church sponsors the students. Gilbert also participates. Tempe and Chandler begin participating in the fall.
“We are going one school at a time,” said Ruth. “We never had it planned to get this big. We go year to year.” It truly is amazing what these ladies have accomplished, and the difference they are making in the lives of students all over the East Valley. Based on surveys filled out by each teacher, at the end of the school year, 70 percent of kids were doing better overall.
Ruth is in awe of the amazing people she has met, and how the community has embraced this organization. “This is my free time, and I am using it in the best way possible,” she said.
As St. Catherine of Siena said, “Be the person God meant you to be, and you will set the world on fire.” Thank you, AZ Brain Food, for being that group, and for setting our little part of the world on fire.
If you would like to donate time, money or food, please contact Ruth Collins at www.azbrainfood.org.