A few months ago, a Flushing elementary school teacher asked her students to draw a picture of the one thing that meant the most to them during the 2010 school year. One little girl drew a picture of the food bag she received every week from the Bread for Life program.

“That made the whole year for us,” said Rev. Cliff Bira, pastor at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Flushing for the past 27 years. “The impact that we believed we were making was suddenly real.”

The program now will be able to extend its reach with a $2,000 grant from the Flushing Area Community Fund. The grant will be used to buy more food with greater nutritional value for the 75 to 80 children who are receiving weekend meals through the Bread for Life program this year.

“Bread for Life seeks to bridge the gap that federal, state, and local programs do not provide to school children,” Rev. Bira said.

With help from area elementary school, preschool and Early Childhood Center staff, children who receive federally funded school lunches are selected for the Bread for Life program based on a handful of criteria. Without the program, children who receive federally funded meals may find themselves having to go without food between their school lunch on Friday and breakfast on Monday. The program also provides children with extra food so they don’t go hungry on school holidays.

The program—which was piloted in 2008 and formally launched in winter 2009—is coordinated through Holy Cross Lutheran Church. Other area churches—like Flushing United Methodist, Flushing Presbyterian, and the Cornerstone Community Church-Free Methodist—also provide volunteers to package the meals, collect food donations from parishioners and help raise funds.

Volunteers from each of the participating churches gather once a week on Thursday evenings in the basement of Holy Cross Lutheran Church to package up the food, which is either picked up by families or delivered to the schools. All of the food comes in individually portioned servings—like tuna packets with crackers—so that children are able to prepare their own meals.

The program got its start about four years ago when a parishioner at Holy Cross came up with the idea as an assignment for her Christian outreach training. Rev. Bira, who was mentoring the parishioner at the time, urged her to turn the idea into an actual program.

“Chronically hungry children have a difficult time concentrating in school,” Rev. Bira said, “so with the program we’re investing in the future of our community as well.”