My friend Courtney has been a member of this thing called Junior League for a short while and reached out to me about joining.
As a wife, the mother of a toddler and someone who also holds a full time job selling real estate and a part time job at LA Fitness (because lets face it, I have worked there for 8 years and worship my coworkers.. and the free family memberships help haha) I didn't know if I could add anything else to my plate. And then.. I learned about what joining Junior League would mean for me. This is not only an opportunity to network and meet some other local mothers... but a chance to make a difference.
Since having a child, anything child related seems to hit close to home so much more. This love that overcomes your entire being once you have a child.. it is overwhelming and it makes you want to save every child that you can. When you and your husband are on the floor playing with your baby and shes laughing so hard that she is begging you to stop.. and the begging you for more.. you look around at your family and think, "I hope that every child out there has a family who loves them as much as we love Tori, or that all the children have a nice warm house, food in their bellies, clothing on their backs....". And then the harsh realization that not every child has that hits you and you wish you could do more.
Junior League does that. They have helped not only children, but women in so many ways in the community. They help local charities and organizations with different things like food drives, clothing drives, they had a recent project where they painted and pretty much completely redecorated a nursery... and now enter my new member class and we are working on a project called "Power Packs Project". Did you know that for some children, the lunch they eat at school on Friday is the last time they will eat until they go back to school Monday morning? I couldn't believe that. It literally was a kick in the stomach. Food. Something most of us would never think twice about. Throwing our leftovers out, tossing out items because we didn't eat them fast enough.. and there are children, in YOUR neighborhood, DOWN THE STREET... who wont eat this weekend. Children who wont be running under their parents feet as they are cooking in the kitchen, children who wont be helping their parents stir anything, children who wont get a meal, let alone seconds.
Power Packs wants to end this in our community. What they do is, they reach out to different school districts to see if there is a need for the families to use their services. Power packs staff pack food for the parents to pick up from the school. One of the coolest things about this is that Power Packs doesn't just throw a box of mac and cheese in a bag and give it to a family, they try to make their meals nutritional, including proteins, fruits and vegetables.. and they give a recipe for the family to follow along with a price guide so the families can see what they would expect if they were to buy the meal at the grocery store. Most of the meals would cost around 5.40 to purchase.
Power packs is only given about 3% of their food in donations. They mostly purchase it themselves for a discounted rate at Central PA food bank. They also have food drives to try to get donations.
We are currently working alongside Power Packs to try to help them however we can. It is looking as if we will be hosting a peanut butter food drive. Peanut butter is one of the more expensive things for the organization to purchase so we are hoping to set up at a couple of local grocery stores and that customers going into the stores will pick up an extra jar of peanut butter to donate on their way out.
This program is at every school district in Lancaster County except for CV (they have a program through a church). Power Packs is looking to expand to York and Lebanon so that may be something else that my Junior League new members group may be working on.
I am so excited and proud to be a part of this group and to get to help give something back to this community. Lancaster county, this community so near and dear to my heart!
*If you would like to donate, or maybe know of a local company that would like to donate, please contact me via fbook or call/text me. Anything and everything helps!!!!
When the new member class was announced (just missing a few ladies)
New members and a few current JL members on a tour at the Power Packs warehouse:
