SDA school food pantry reopens to help families

By Shamar Blunt

Thirty parents from the Bridgetown Seventh-day Adventist Primary and Secondary Schools will soon get some
much-needed food supplies, thanks to the efforts of the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA).

Principal of the Bridgetown Seventh-day Adventist Primary School Winslow Benn told Barbados TODAY on Wednesday that the food pantry programme which started in 2019 has been revived, following “a slight hiatus”, to assist several parents who approached the school for assistance.

“We are not just here . . . dealing with students, we also must be looking at how we can cater to the families,” he said.

PTA president of the Primary School section, Patricia Greenidge, thanked the schools’ parents for their contribution
to the drive, noting that while the collection of items was initially slow, numerous donations in the form of produce, canned goods, and other items quickly picked up.

“As PTA president, I worked closely with the parents at both schools – the primary and the secondary school – and we saw the need. We have to help our parents,” she said.

“At the primary school, what we did is that we created menus so each class has different menus. At the secondary school, we liaise with our parents as they bring  food items or they bring monetary donations, and we extend it to our board members [who] also contribute.”

Greenidge said the hope was to continue the programme monthly, given the immense financial pressure some parents continue to face, and healthy choices would be added to future menus.

“Right now, our parents donate things that are healthy, but some of us are vegetarians so we would like to purchase vegetarian foods which are costly. But we are working towards that so that we would have broad [choices] of [food] which we can distribute to our parents,” she explained.

In an effort to maintain discretion during the process, parents utilising the services of the pantry are anonymous to the committee, with only select members aware of who are slated to receive the packages. (SB)