ORANGE PARK – Providing food to hungry families hasn’t been a problem for Orange Park High’s monthly food distribution.

The real challenge, said Community Partnership School Director Lauren Pfanenstiel, has been spreading the word about available resources and silencing the stigma that sometimes comes with being needy.

The partnership, which is part of the Children’s Home Society of Florida, offers a drive-up food distribution in the parking lot of the school on the third Thursday of every month, and Pfanenstiel said her organization has enough food to feed twice as many families that use the program.

“This month, on Nov. 17, we’re going to have a pretty good distribution because we’ve got some great donations,” she said. “We want to get the word out. We’ve had about 42 or 43 families on an average, but we can definitely feed double that. We need people to know who are in need.”

When a family drives up to the orange tent near the Family Center in the east parking lot, a bag of food is delivered to their car. The hours are 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m., which makes it one of the rare nighttime pantries in Northeast Florida.

“It’s good for working families to be able to come up at that time of day,” Pfanenstiel said.

Pfanenstiel said she’s noticed a greater need for assistance, but it’s not always easy to connect families with the help they need.

“In our particular school, we have over 1,000 students who meet the criteria for living in low-income households,” she said. “We’re seeing more students being added to our weekly food distribution lists, which means they take food home every week and supplemental food over the weekend. There’s sometimes a stigma around kids wanting to ask for food. So this is just stigma-free. It’s a drive-through. There are no students that volunteer at our food distribution, so they won’t know in terms of peers.”

Pfanenstiel said Orange Park High is considered a food desert since many groceries have raised their prices and “it’s not affordable for many families.”

The Community Partnership School program provides health and wellness services to students, as well as providing access to healthy foods and helping with homework.

The core partners for the program are the Children’s Home Society of Florida, Clay County Schools District, HCA Florida Orange Park Hospital, Palms Medical Group and St. Johns River State College.

By: Don Coble

Originally posted by Clay Today