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Master Provisions, Go Pantry, St. Elizabeth team up to provide summer food boxes to Boone students


Master Provisions is an especially busy place lately, serving as the staging area to provide 1500 boxes of food to Boone County students during the coming summer break.

This is the second year for a three-way collaboration that involves Master Provisions, St. Elizabeth Healthcare and Physicians, and Go Pantry.

The goal is to provide boxes of nutritious food to families of students when school is out over summer vacation.

Go Pantry is an all-volunteer group that coordinates with school resource centers who distribute the summer boxes weekly to families. St. Elizabeth personnel donate food, or money to purchase food, to make sure the boxes are filled. Master Provisions offers its warehouse facility and trucking capabilities to the project, delivering empty boxes to various St. Elizabeth locations around Northern Kentucky and picking up the filled boxes.

Volunteer Carter McIntire helps with the summer food boxes.

At MP’s facility, volunteers from both St. Elizabeth and Go Pantry check each box for food items that might be damaged or expired and add any missing food items. The boxes are then secured in MP’s warehouse. MP delivers the boxes weekly to Boone County schools. Families of students qualifying for free or reduced lunches pick up the boxes there.

“Master Provisions’ mission is to serve God by connecting resources to needs,” said MP President Roger Babik. “Go Pantry discovered a tremendous need among students here in our own community and we’re pleased to collaborate with them and with St. Elizabeth to feed hungry children.”

Check this out …. Here is a peek into the MASTER Provisions warehouse where all the GO Pantry boxes are being held for collection. This video shows approx half of the boxes needed to meet the summer demand. The second part of video shows the quality checking stations. The unchecked boxes are staged and ready for today’s volunteers. Looking forward to another great day serving with a great team as we tackle another set of boxes. This warehouse shows the blessing and support that has poured into GO Pantry over last few weeks. Together we are going to help hundreds of kids get through the summer. Thank you!

Posted by GO Pantry on Sunday, May 20, 2018

Go Pantry began their work by assembling and distributing bags of food to feed students who often were hungry over the weekend without school breakfasts and lunches. In 2017, they partnered with St. Elizabeth to collect enough food to aid families during the summer school break.

Master Provisions had been providing its warehouse to Go Pantry volunteers on weekends throughout the school year. By working from a shared space, Go Pantry could focus on feeding children, rather than on paying for a rented space. The summer food boxes required even more space as well as transportation and assistance with logistics, which was made possible using MP’s fleet of trucks.

St. E volunteers prepare the summer food boxes (Photos provided)

Jeff Schaaf, MP’s Operations Manager said, “I am extremely blessed to partner with teams from Go Pantry and St. Elizabeth.  The level of passion and dedication they bring to this task is extraordinary!”

Hunger is a challenge among the economically disadvantaged in Northern Kentucky; many families experience hunger even with low unemployment rates. Although households in the top 20 percent of income spend just 11 percent of income on food, families in the lowest 20 percent must spend 15 percent of income on food. And, the cost of housing, healthcare and education have risen dramatically, putting extra pressure on household budgets. (Ky. State Data Center figures)

The Boone County Schools parents who founded Go Pantry saw the impact on students first hand and were inspired to address the need, reaching out to Master Provisions in order to meet the demand within the schools.

To learn more, or to donate, visit masterprovisions.org or gopantry.org.

St. Elizabeth Healthcare employees volunteer to help.


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One Comment

  1. Dawn Lusk says:

    When is your next food giveaway in Covington

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