2021 Gift Card Food Drive

As a result of Covid, the Child Development Center (CDC) at Mesa College has been closed for more than a year.  The school decided to open the CDC late in Fall 2021.  They reached out to me to see if Picky Eats would be interested on 12/6 to raise money for the upcoming winter break.  The CDC serves the community by providing low income families, and to college students, that have kids zero to low cost preschool (40 kids). Food is provided for the kids while they’re in school, but about 20 percent (8 kids) of the children still have food insecurities when they go home.  Mesa College and the CDC will close for winter break from 12/22-1/18. That means the parents have to find some way to feed their kids on their own during this break (four weeks).

I wanted to see if I can help the parents. Last year, I decided to buy grocery gift cards and give it to the parents. Me and my volunteers did charity work for donations, started a GoFundMe, and stood in front of Wal-Mart for hours, to raise money to buy grocery gift cards, and toys for these kids.   This year I want to try something different. I want to provide an actual hot meal to the child and not just groceries to the parents. I’ve surveyed all the semi-healthy fast food restaurants near Mesa College that have a Kid’s menu.  The restaurant that offered a good healthy kids menu at a price point around $5 are the following: El Pollo Loco, Luna Grill, Panera Bread, Jersey Mikes, and Chipotle.While I would like to feed all 40 preschoolers, I want to focus mainly the 30 percent of the kids thathave food insecurities. I budgeted $5 per child food gift cards from your restaurant per day for 4 days for 4weeks or (((12 kids x $5) x 4 days)x4 weeks) or $960 that I will need to raise.   I will create a flyer and distribute them to the the restaurants.  Hopefully they will donate what they can to my cause.  I will be buying $5 gift cards from the different restaurants up to my goal of $960.   That way the kids will get a good selection of food every week. This goal of the $5 food gift card is to feed only the child, not the parents. And it only addresses the 12 out of 40 kids.  I have only two weeks to raise money.  The food gift cards must be distributed before the kids last day of school, 12/17I have raised about $500 so far I can contribute to buy the cards. If I don’t make my goal of $960, I will just provide fewer cards to the kids.