South Dakota high school working to combat food insecurity in a creative way

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) – According to Feeding America, at least one in five children worry about where their next meal is coming from. One South Dakota high school says they’ve found a solution towards combating this issue as well as the stigma surrounding it.

In October of last year, Mitchell High School opened the doors to their very own food pantry for students, they said their goal that first week was to have at least 5 students take advantage of the service. They said that now they’re averaging at least 30 students a week and last week even had 52 students stop by.

Jodi Reiners who created the Mitchell School District Caring Closet, said she’s been working closely with Mitchell High School and the Snack Pack Program towards helping students achieve their academic goals. The most recent endeavor being the Mitchell High School Food Pantry.

“We’re open after school, and we have volunteers here who then supervise students,” stated Jodi and when explaining how the food pantry works she said, “[Students] can come in and get eight food items, two cans of vegetables, a can of fruit and six snack items for over the weekend.”

Since the start of the food pantry a little over a year ago, Jodi said she’s received countless messages from parents sharing what an impact it’s made to their food budget and gives them a chance to stretch the dollars more than they could before.

Jodi went on to state, “You don’t know the difference that this is really making between the food pantry, and also the caring closet, and just helping the kids be able to focus on their academics, that’s what they should be focusing on.”

Dean of Students, Kimberly Max, said that with help from people like Jodi and her volunteers at the MSD Caring Closet they’ve even been able to offer students who don’t have the essentials to cook a meal the proper utensils needed to do so. Kimberly said this in turn helps set the students up for success in the future.

Kimberly expanding on this by saying, “Making it a learning opportunity for them to expand on their own knowledge of things and to be able to care for themselves to become better citizens as they go out into the world.”

Copyright 2023 KSFY. All rights reserved.