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WALLACE — Anyone who makes regular trips to the local grocery store knows it’s economically challenging to feed any family these days. It is especially hard on families living in homes experiencing what some people call “more month than money.”
As a result, the statistics are concerning. It’s estimated about 3,560 children in Duplin County are living in homes with food insecurity. A ministry in Duplin County is helping feed those children on a large scale.
Feed Our Hungry Children, associated with Duplin Christian Outreach Ministries, is currently led by co-directors Connie Perkins and Jim Perry. Duplin Journal spoke with Perkins about the work of feeding Duplin County’s children in need. She said the history of the ministry dated back to 2009.
“Faye Sellars read an article in what I believe was the Wilmington paper about children not having sufficient food on the weekends,” Perkins said. “She told her husband what she read, and he said, ‘If there are children hungry there on weekends, I’m sure there are children that are hungry here, too.’”
From that conversation, Feed Our Hungry Children was born.
After many years, Sellars eventually contacted Perkins and said she thought it was time to pass the torch of operating the ministry. That’s when Perkins and Perry took over the reins.
In the early part of the ministry, the focus was on helping children who did not qualify for free or reduced lunches at school but were still affected by economic challenges within their families. They were the ones left behind because they could not afford lunch at school. Feed Our Hungry Children turned to churches and began collecting donations to pay for school lunches for those children.
Eventually, school systems began providing free lunches.
“As for school lunches, if they’re getting free lunches there, they probably don’t have sufficient food on the weekends,” Perkins said.
The ministry stepped in and began focusing on food backpacks for the weekends, as well as during the week during the summer. So far this year, Feed Our Hungry Children has distributed 8,052 backpacks to children in need. This summer, an additional 750 backpacks have been given to children who do not have transportation to reach one of the school system’s nutrition sites open during the summer months.
According to Perkins, the ministry locates those children who can’t make it to nutrition sites by reaching out to social workers in the county.
While the contents in the backpacks vary, Perkins opened one and shared its contents with Duplin Journal. The backpack contained a microwaveable container of spaghetti, Pop Tarts, a can of beans and franks, a fruit cup of diced peaches and a squeeze pack of apple sauce. It also contained a pack of peanut butter crackers, two oatmeal cakes and two bottles of water.
The Feed Our Hungry Children backpack ministry currently serves students at five Duplin County schools.
Perkins said she and Perry had met on the afternoon of her interview with Duplin Journal to begin the process of gearing up for the upcoming school year.
Distributing over 8,800 food backpacks so far this year has not been an inexpensive endeavor. The ministry is dependent on contributions from churches, organizations, businesses and individuals to accomplish their mission.
