Food Lion Helps Feed Students at Philo-Hill Magnet Academy

Amanda Zydiak, Mark Hairston, Lee Emmons, Julie Puckett

 

On Tuesday, Mark Hairston, the principal at Philo-Hill Magnet Academy, and Julie Puckett, a learning-team facilitator with the school system, visited the Food Lion store on N.C. Hwy. 150 to pick up the $3,500 check that Food Lion is giving to Philo-Hill to pay for food for students who might otherwise go hungry on weekends.

Lee Emmons, the store’s manager, and Amanda Zydiak, the store’s customer-service manager, presented the check. In addition to the jumbo-size check they presented to Hairston for the photo, they also gave him a regular-size check that he could take to the bank.

“We will utilize that money to help our children,” Hairston said. “A big thank you goes out to Food Lion.”

“I’m glad we’re able to help the school and give them this money,” Emmons said. “I look forward to working with them in the future.”

The Feeding the Hungry grant from the Food Lion Charitable Foundation will be used to support the school’s new BackPack program. Beginning soon, volunteers from Salem Chapel, a church in Winston-Salem, will fill backpacks with nutritious, nonperishable foods and send them home on Fridays with students who are eligible for free or reduced-price meals at school during the week.

“Through their generous donation, there will be some children who won’t be going hungry on the weekend,” said Puckett.

Puckett applied for the grant and began working to organize a BackPack program for Philo-Hill when she was the learning-team facilitator at the school during the 2011-12 school year. She has since been transferred to Carver High School.

Established in 2001, the Food Lion Charitable Foundation supports hunger-relief efforts in communities served by Food Lion. The Feeding America BackPack Program is a national program that works through 150 local food banks to distribute food to children. Locally, Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina participates.  

During the 2011-12 school year, 13 Winston-Salem/Forsyth County schools participated in the BackPack program. Another six more are in the process of organizing programs for the 2012-13 school year.  For an entire school year, it costs about $10,000 to feed 50 children by providing a total of 8,000 meals during 40 weekends.