East View Public School teachers, staff and volunteers served hot dogs and hamburgers to the entire student body Friday to celebrate a gift to the school’s hot lunch program.
GEN7, an Indigenous-owned chain of gas stations and convenience stores, donated $5,000 to the program that serves lunch to many East View students each day.
The company also gifted the school with a commercial grade dishwasher worth approximately $7,000 for after-lunch cleaning of plates, bowls and utensils.
“We run the hot lunch program four days a week for any student that's interested,” said Jay Dunseath, East View Public School principal in an interview with SooToday.
The menu has a variety of dishes for students to enjoy.
“Wednesdays are pizza day. We get pizza and pasta from Aurora's Hillside and that’s a paid program. On Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday we have the free hot lunch program. Mondays are soup day, Tuesdays are grilled cheese and we have pasta on Fridays. On Thursdays students from the White Pines DARE Program (Developing Alternative Realistic Expectations) cook and bring lunch over for us on Thursdays. Yesterday they made Sloppy Joes for us,” Dunseath said.
The East View lunch program is not a luxury but a necessity.
Food is essential to any student’s physical, mental and emotional strength and vital to a child’s ability to learn.
“Food insecurity is an issue across our city, across Algoma and across the country. We recognize that this was a barrier to learning for our students. This is a societal issue. We recognize that we have to break down the barrier to learning so our students have every opportunity to learn just like anybody else. We recognize that a lot of our kids come here with barriers that we will do our best to overcome so that they can be as successful as they can be. We have to feed the body, feed the mind,” Dunseath said.
The school serves 200 meals to students on its busiest days.
The hot lunch program, with an annual budget of $21,000, couldn’t be done without donations such as that from GEN7 and other supporters, Dunseath said.
“We've been able to redirect some of our funds for other programs such as breakfast and snack programs. But we've also received generous donations from the school community, from the parents, from grandparents. We've also received donations from former students of the school. They’ve heard about us through word of mouth,” he added.
The role volunteers play in East View’s hot lunch program is crucial, Dunseath said.
“We're entirely volunteer driven. We have volunteers who go shopping for the food, we have volunteers who deliver the food, we have volunteers who prepare the food, volunteers who deliver it out to classrooms and volunteers who clean up after all of that,” he added.
Dunseath expressed his gratitude for the GEN7 purchase of a dishwasher for the program, stating it will dramatically ease the workload of volunteers who previously hand-washed plates and utensils used by up to 200 students on a daily basis.
“Food insecurity is a significant problem in our First Nations communities. The East View Public School program not only addresses this, it also improves the learning environment for all the students who use the program,” Gary Williams, GEN7 Fuels spokesperson, said in a release.
East View has a large number of Indigenous students.
The Algoma District School Board voiced its thanks for the GEN7 gift.
“Now more than ever, food programs are important for children and youth in our schools. Studies have shown that children whose nutritional needs are met have fewer attendance and discipline problems, and their ability to learn is enhanced,” Joe Maurice, ADSB superintendent of education, said in a release.
