The Rindge Athletic Men’s Social Club, or R.A.M.S., is sponsoring a cereal drive to support the local Got Lunch program, which is designed to ensure students are fed when they’re out of school and don’t have access to free or reduced lunch and breakfast programs.
The Got Lunch program serves children in the Rindge and Jaffrey communities, and is run by volunteers out of the Rindge United Church of Christ. During the school year, the program provides bags with groceries to provide meals for children over the weekend, as well as over vacation weeks during school and during the summer.
The Got Lunch program implemented an emergency response when COVID-19 caused schools to shut down and move to an online learning platform, and have committed to continuing the program as long as schools are closed, as well as their usual summer offerings.
“We’ve actually always had a relationship with them and a lot of different organizations in town,” R.A.M.S. President Jim O’Loughlin said Tuesday. “The R.A.M.S. is the arm of whomever needs whatever in town. So we reached out to see what they need.”
One of those needs was concrete and immediate, R.A.M.S. Vice-President Mike DiPasquale said.
“The Got Lunch program goes through 92 boxes of cereal a week,” DiPasquale said.
It seemed the perfect item for a donation drive, DiPasquale said – it has a long shelf-life, so it can be gathered in bulk, has a high need, and is something most people can afford to give a box of.
“We’ve been donating to [Got Lunch] monetarily for several years, and with the situation we’re in the best way to do something for the community is to help feed them if they need it,” DiPasquale said. “We’re working with the food pantry as well, but this is also an immediate need, and we could help out immediately.”
The Hometown Irving, West of the Border and North of the Border in Rindge all put out donation boxes to collect cereal donations as of this weekend, and there’s already been a community push to help fill them, O’Loughlin said. By Tuesday, the R.A.M.S. had collected about 100 boxes, nearly a third of their initial goal to provide breakfast for the program for three weeks.
“The people of the town have really stepped up and are being generous,” O’Loughlin said.
Cereal donations can be made at the Hometown Irving, North of the Border or West of the Border in Rindge.
Online donations to the Got Lunch program can be made through www.rindgechurch.org/got-lunch.html and checks can be sent to Got Lunch, P.O. Box 451, Rindge, NH, 03461. To volunteer for the Got Lunch program, contact gotlunch@rindgeucc.org.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.