SHELBY COUNTY, Tenn. — November 20 is Universal Children’s Day, and in Shelby County, the focus is on children who don’t have enough to eat.
Students at one Shelby County School are helping with that cause by feeding their classmates. Students at Woodstock Middle School got a crash-course on putting together food packs.
They assembled 10,000-20,000 red lentil jambalaya meals on Wednesday that serve up to six people.
Some of the food will go to school children across the country, but 20% of it will stay right at the school.
“We have real high needs in our area,” Woodstock principal William Johnson said.
Johnson said this food help will just begin to meet those needs.
Students on the assembly line seemed to understand how important the project is.
“They don’t have enough food, so they are like how, they are worried about their food instead of their education,” a student said.
The school already started a food pantry for children in need and will send home two of the food packets with every student.
“For people not directly affected, I would like them to know this is the number one barriers that gets in the way of children actually being able to learn,” Johnson said.
Cigna, Feeding Children Everywhere and We Charity are all working together to make this possible. They packaged 245,000 meals at seven schools in seven cities in just one day.
Woodstock is working with the Mid-South Food Bank to grow it’s food pantry. One of their biggest obstacles is getting students and parents to open up about needs at home.