As a father with a young child, one Washington man was heartbroken when he heard that schools were ‘lunch shaming’ students who couldn’t afford to pay for their meals.
“I was reading up and watching the national media of the lunch shaming crisis–how other schools have tossed the lunch because a kid did not have enough money or stamped on the arm saying, ‘I owe lunch money.’ Just from hearing that news coverage it kind of broke my heart as a father. I can’t imagine having one of my children coming home from school saying, ‘Hey, I was denied lunch because I owed money,'” said Jeffery Lew, whose son is eight years old.
Lew looked up how much school lunch debt there was at his son’s school and then created the “Erase Seattle School Lunch Debt!” campaign on GoFundMe to pay off the $97.10 debt. He quickly raised the amount they needed, but decided to set the goal higher to see if they could pay off the $21,000 of debt for the whole Seattle School District. Within five days, generous strangers had donated more than $23,000. “We hit the goal real quickly,” Lew said. “It feels amazing because it takes a village. I really credit the whole community coming together.”
“I think parents are so busy in their work life and different things where they forget to send their children to school with lunch money…there could be parents that are in a tough financial situation that we don’t know about and can’t afford it,” Lew said. “We just don’t know what these kids or families are going through. No kid should go hungry regard if they have money or not.”
“As a district, we are committed to partnering with families and communities to provide students the best educational experience,” a school spokesman said in a statement. “Part of that experience is making sure all of our students have access to a healthy breakfast and lunch, whether they have money to pay for meals at the time or not. The money recently raised by families will be used to pay down school lunch debt. Any money left over will be used to pay future school lunch debt. Thank you to our great families for helping us ensure success for all our students.”
Watch the entire video below to see the how this dad put an end to lunch shaming in more than 90 schools.
Can you believe how much money this father was able to raise so kids don’t go hungry in school? Let us know what you think in the comments below and please SHARE this with friends on Facebook.
[Featured image: ABC]
Dad Pays Off School Lunch Debt To End ‘Lunch Shaming’ is an article from: LifeDaily