Church works to fill summer hunger gap

Jan 04, 2024

The Justice Project, a ministry of Unified City Church at 801 Cherry Street, North Wilkesboro, recently finished its first summer of delivering meals to the homes of food-insecure children in Wilkes County.

Food was delivered to over 300 children in pre-K through fifth grade as part of the Justice Project’s Feed the Kids Project. These 300-plus kids were among over 500 children receiving bags of food each week through Feed the Kids this summer.

Husband and wife Jody and Nickie Brady are co-directors of the Justice Project and Nickie Brady is leading the Feed the Kids Project.

She was among 20 local recipients $5,000 “Weaver” grants from the

Washington, D.C.-based Aspen Institute earlier this month. The non-profit Aspen Institute awarded the grants in Wilkes as part of its goal of helping people become better connected with others where they live, with a particular emphasis on success of children in school.

Nickie Brady said the $5,000 will be used to purchase more food to feed children in Wilkes.

Each bag of food is intended to provide enough for one meal per day for a child for about five days. Each bag included about

$6 worth of food, including such items as tuna fish, cereal, cheese crackers, instant oatmeal, fruit cups, instant macaroni and cheese, noodles and sauce, gummy fruit snacks, pop tarts, instant pudding, blueberry almond breakfast bars and cookies. Nothing required any more than a microwave for preparation.

Many volunteers help put food in bags for children, such as Unified City Church youth (UKIDS), interns from the YMCA of Greater Charlotte’s Camp Harrison in Boomer and residents of a group home in Taylorsville.

Feed the Kids began with providing meals for some of the children in the Wilkes Family YMCA’s summer day camp three years ago. Working with Christian Clack, Y day camp site coordinator, this is ongoing.

Brady explained that children are expected to arrive at the day camp with bag lunches and snacks brought from home but many scholarships participants weren’t doing this.

At about the time the Justice Project began providing food for kids in the Y Day Camp, it began providing the same for many of children living in the North Wilkesboro Housing Authority’s public housing. Brady said this ongoing effort is coordinated with Greta Ferguson, family self-sufficiency coordinator at the housing authority.

Bags of food for children also are made available when the Justice Project’s food pantry at the church is open to the community from 4-7 p.m. every Thursday year-round.

Brady said food deliveries to over 300 Wilkes children from the first week of July to the third week of August resulted from the realization that many local kids facing food insecurity aren’t fed through centralized meal sites provided through the schools nor in other ways in the summer due to lack of transportation or other reasons.

Brady said Karen Wolford, teacher assistant at Wilkesboro Elementary and Justice Project volunteer, and April Marr, director of student services in the Wilkes schools, worked with school counselors and social workers to identify these kids in pre-K through fifth grades. Brady said many are being raised by a single mother or grandmother.

She said single caregivers with jobs sometimes must leave elementary age kids to care for younger siblings because they can’t afford a baby-sitter or daycare. “Plus, it takes a lot of gas to come up here (to the Wilkesboros for meals) from an area out in the county like Ferguson.”

Volunteers (Unified City Church members) delivered food to homes with the identified 300-plus kids on seven routes once a week in July and August.

The largest route was Wilkesboro and North Wilkesboro with about 90 kids, largely in public and sliding scale housing. The smallest was the Traphill area and portions of Wilkes with Elkin addresses, with about 20 kids.

“We always sent volunteers out with a few additional bags for extra kids in homes or neighbors,” she said.

Brady said Wolford shared a story about a delivery she made to a home with three kids and a single mother. “She said the kids were excited and as they opened their bags, a little girl said, ‘Look mommy, we have food.’ ”

Some of the people delivering food “said they never realized people could live in such conditions because some of the homes they went to were so dilapidated…. I know all of them came back grateful for what they had and they food they had on their tables.”

Brady was told that YMCA day camp kids who receive Justice Project food bags love Thursdays because that’s when it is delivered.

Brady knows personally about being a hungry child. She said both of her parents worked in a textile mill in High Point but had a difficult time making ends meet with their large family when she was growing up, so she often went without meals so her younger siblings could eat.

In addition to feeding children, the Justice Project provides kids with school supplies and teachers with care packages.

Brady said Samaritan Kitchen of Wilkes does a great job providing eligible kids with small backpacks of food every weekend during the school year. During the academic year, free school lunch and breakfast meals are available to all kids in elementary and middle school grades and to eligible high school students.

She said the Justice Project hasn’t been without enough food for its programs but ran close a few times this summer. She said most of the food is bought at Sam’s Club in Winston-Salem with money donated by Unified City Church members and others. Local people donate fruits and vegetables they grow, plus the Justice Project has a greenhouse and raised bed garden on church property.

The Justice Project also assists elderly people in the community on a case-by-case basis by delivering food to their homes and in other ways. It helps families and individuals in times of crisis, including by helping connect people with appropriate agencies.

Brady said the homeless population in Wilkes has rapidly grown in recent years and the Justice Project provides homeless people with tents, sleeping bags, blankets, camp stoves and personal hygiene products, in addition to helping them find housing, transportation and jobs.

She said the Justice Project works with homeless people in direct correlation with how much they wish to work on improving their situations.

Brady said these various efforts to help people locally include counseling and working in partnerships with other agencies. Justice Project volunteers helped shuttle people during the NASCAR All-Star Race at the North Wilkesboro Speedway in May in return for a donation from Speedway Motorsports, owner of that facility.

A description of the different Justice Project initiatives includes this statement, “We also wish to develop ongoing relationships with people, whereby the hope and love of Christ can be shared and other spiritual, emotional and physical assistance can be offered to help bring individuals out of their current circumstances and into the destiny that God has for each one.”

Mike Roberts is lead pastor at Unified City Church. For more information about the non-denominational church, including on making donations to the Justice Project, go to www.unifiedcitychurch.com.

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