Kitchen on the Street

herein he watched a 2nd grade student search through the cafeteria trash for food! After investigating, he found that this student and her siblings were from a low-income family and struggled to get food on weekends, outside of school. After hearing this, Vince and Lisa started the process of forming a 501c3 nonprofit called Kitchen on the Street, for the express purposing of serving food insecure kids in AZ. Kitchen on the Street currently provides Bags of Hope (weekend food backpacks) to 2,000+ children throughout the Valley. Bags of Hope are distributed through schools and provide the nutrients necessary to properly fuel a child’s body and brain so they can be an academic success. Their research indicates that once a food insecure child receives a Bag of Hope on a regular basis, reading skills increase by 12% and math scores improve by 26%! The organization attempts to preserve the environment by reusing plastic bags and facilitates a food rescue program, since food is the largest source of waste in US landfills. Kitchen on the Street is KID friendly, allowing children ages 10 and up to volunteer; they also welcome school Field Trips and have developed a “Taking it to the Streets” curriculum that is done in school classrooms, using videos, games and activities to educate the next generation on how just one life event can create food insecurity. Every August they kick-off a year long Jr. High, High School and College Students as another means of educating youth on food insecurity and engaging them in the process of finding creative solutions to this social injustice. This hunger relief organization is of the firm believe that childhood hunger can be eliminated. They belief that so strongly that they introduced a dinosaur mascot with a mission to “make childhood hunger extinct”.