01-03-2025
Centre County YMCA; Stuckey partner to combat child hunger
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (WTAJ) — YMCA of Centre County and Stuckey Mitsubishi teamed up to combat hunger for Central Pennsylvania children.
Food insecurity, which is the inability to access nutritious food for your family, is a nationwide problem. In areas like Centre County, one in five children cannot afford meals.
'Right now, across the country, are 47.4 million people facing food insecurity, of which 13.4 million of those are children,' Anti-Hunger Director Mel Curtis of the YMCA of Centre County said.
The two businesses came together to fight back. Stuckey dealership locations in the county made themselves donation hubs for non-perishable food items. Saturday was the final day before loading up 'The Traveling Table' bus with all the donations.
These donations will help make two sets of three square meals for each child for weekend usage. These meals go to families that have a hard time putting food on the table.
'We're really happy to be able to help students and children in the area get meals over the weekend when we know things might be scarce,' Christie Clancy, the marketing director at Stuckey Mitsubishi said. 'Or maybe, the whole family doesn't have as much.'
'If you are without a job or have some kind of issue or that you're struggling with, and you have those that depend on you to have that opportunity to be able to just fill the mouths of your children,' Bill Zettlemoyer, a sales manager at Stuckey said.
With these weekend backpack programs, it can get costly for the YMCA. They pack bags each week for multiple institutions in Centre County and Clearfield County, costing about $5,000 according to Curtis.
'We're packing every week,' Curtis added. '1,685 backpacks to go out to eight school districts, charter schools and head start programs.'
But the price tag is worth the charity. Curtis also mentioned how cognitive performance has increased in the classroom.
'They see the absenteeism just dropping off,' he said. 'Mondays was usually the busiest day in a nurse's room. You know, kids were coming into school. They were hungry, so they were acting out. Therefore, you know, they're seeing that these kids now are coming back and they're listening in classrooms.'
'When you're hungry, a lot of times that's what you think about is just being hungry. You can't really focus on anything else,' Zettlemoyer added.
The partnership aided in helping out the community, and Clancy found the joy in charity.
'We're really happy to be able to, to give back, as much as we can and really show that we not only support our customers, we support the communities,' she said.
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