Kids Meals in Houston
What does community mean to you? How does volunteering your time make you feel? Have you been wanting to give back to your community and don’t know where to start? Well, lucky for you, I have just the place where you can make a difference, you can volunteer, and you can do community outreach for a good cause.
Kids Meals is meals on wheels for preschool children and they need more volunteers to help prepare lunches and drop them off to hungry children in the Houston area.
Last Friday I used my morning off to take Eli to Kids’ Meals to volunteer some of our time. Elijah has always had it pretty easy. He is a great kid so naturally he gets whatever he wants (in a non spoiled brat kind of way lol) BUT there are times that I felt Eli didn’t realize how fortunate he was so volunteering was the one thing that I knew would open his eyes and y’all, I AM SO GLAD WE WENT! From the moment you walk in you see photographs of happy children with these brown sack lunches just smiling. Right away you know that you are doing something positive and worth every single minute of your time. We watched a video to learn more about Kids’ Meals and then we went to the back to start preparing lunches. Elijah, Tarah, and me were doing the actual packing of the lunches. We had a system going and before we realized it we had packed over 400 lunches ourselves. The time FLEW by and honestly, we could have stayed there another 2 hours just packing lunches. We as a society often take so many things for granted and being able to volunteer was SO refreshing. I left there feeling happy, knowing I helped in the community. Elijah asked if we could PLEASE come back and next time he wants to pack all the cereal in a Ziploc bag or make sandwiches.
About Kid’s Meals
Kids’ Meals is ais a 501(c)3 nonprofit whose mission is to end childhood hunger by delivering free healthy meals year-round to the doorsteps of Houston’s hungriest preschool-aged children and provide their families with resources to help end the cycle of poverty. Kids’ Meals delivers 3,100 meals a day during the school year, and up to 6,100 per day during the summer. During the summer not only do they provide lunches for preschoolers but they also provide lunch for their siblings as well. Learn more by visiting KIDSMEALSINC.ORG or Follow Kids’ Meals on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.
I have been fortunate enough to be a McDonald’s Partner and learn about everything that they do. We just see the golden arch and yummy fries but McDonald’s does SO much more than make food. They are a big partner with Kids’ Meal’s! McDonald’s makes kids happy ALL the time, whether that is with a McDonald’s Happy Meal or by helping and being a helping hand with Kids’ Meal’s. They are actually the ones who arranged my shift and I cannot wait to do to do it again!
Best Friend Tarah went with us and this is what she had to say about her experience:
“Volunteering at Kids’ Meals was so humbling. From the moment you walk into the doors you can see pictures of kids that they help out, they show you a video that will have you tears and wanting to stay there to pack lunches all day. You walk into the back and they have different stations for you to help with. It amazes me that they are able to feed 6000 kids a day in the summer. It’s wonderful how the community can come together to be able to pack and deliver all those meals. It is definitely an eye opener on what is going on in our own community. We hear and see so much about everywhere else in the world but most people dont realize we have those same issues right here in Houston. It makes you realize that you take your every meal for granted. These kids are receiving a sandwich (which is just cheese and 2 slices of bread) a juice box and a little baggy full of mixed cereals. It’s hard to think that this may be the only meal the child is getting in the home. It’s heartbreaking but so rewarding to have had the opportunity to volunteer and give back to the community. I know I will for sure be back soon to help out more with this organization. ”
What can you do to help?
You can volunteer your time at Kids’ Meals
You can donate items like
Juice Boxes - They are doing a Juicebox challenge so this helps out a lot
Apple Sauce
Cereal
Bread
Ziploc Bags
Do a food drive that includes the above
Donate monetary value
“In every community, there is work to be done. In every nation, there are wounds to heal. In every heart, there is the power to do it. ”
This is a sponsored post by McDonald’s. To learn more, please visit their instagram page here