Cultivate Food Rescue, P-H-M Schools partner for backpack and meal distribution

MISHAWAKA, Ind. -- Cultivate Food Rescue and Penn-Harris Madison Schools partnered for a backpack meal distribution event where families could get lunch at Central Park in Mishawaka Friday.

Amazon also provided financial and operational support, as well as volunteers for the event.

Cultivate has a mission of providing children and families with frozen meals to take home for the weekends in the summer, and for students to take home after school.

Laura McNally, Director of Outreach for Cultivate, said, "So, we have a great community effort here today at Central Park in Mishawaka. We've got Penn Harris Madison schools who do free lunches for kids every day in this park. And then on Fridays, cultivate comes in and we distribute our weekend backpacks. And then also today, we have a wonderful sponsor of ours, Amazon is here with their STEM mobile van to do some robotics experiments for the kids as well."

One of Cultivate's main missions is to eliminate food waste and food insecurity in the community.

Crystal Crump, Instructor with the Amazon Thing Big Experience, stated, "I think it's a really good idea to bring not only like the food, but also like the experience that they're able to see, just because you never know, like what kid is able to have certain experiences, what kid has the certain resources. So, to be able to have this available for everyone, just to kind of come in, I think that's really great."