St. Mary’s celebrates third year of feeding program

If you cook dinner every day for a large family, you know how time consuming, and expensive, it can be. But what if your family had over one hundred hungry little members who relied on you to fill their stomachs? That’s what Father Leroy Flowers and the staff and volunteers at St. Mary’s School deal with on a daily basis. For them, the job of putting food on the table is not only a challenge, but a labor of love.

It costs over two thousand dollars a month to operate the St. Mary’s School feeding program but it is money that has been well spent. Every school day over one hundred children receive a nutritious lunch that they would not otherwise be able to afford. Today the staff, students and program committee celebrated the third anniversary of the program.

Fr. Leroy Flowers, Director, Feeding Program

“There was a number of children who did not go home at twelve o’clock and whom we discovered did not have anything to eat at lunch time and so we felt that there was a need for such a program. Over the years it has proven to be right and that we began with approximately seventy-five children and now we are up to a hundred and twenty five on average. Sometimes as much as one hundred and fifty children per day. So it has proven to be right and also it has addressed the whole matter of truancy in school. And so from those two angles we know what we are doing is the right thing.”

Q: “How has it been addressing the problem of truancy?”

Fr. Leroy Flowers

“In that the children now know that if they are here they will have something to eat and so they don’t need to absent themselves because they don’t have something to eat. So that in itself is how it addresses the problem.”

The children showed their appreciation by performing for those who have made the program possible.

The program is supported by fifteen volunteers, the business community and concerned citizens who have come forward to sponsor a child’s meal that costs only a dollar a day. The Japanese Embassy in Mexico has also given financial assistance which was used to buy additional tables, chairs and eating utensils.

If you would like to sponsor a child’s lunch, you can contact Father Leroy Flowers at 30290. For just five dollars a week, you could guarantee that one little child gets a healthy meal every school day.