Supporting our youth in areas with poverty

Poverty is everywhere in inner city schools K-12! As a coach at an inner city high school I see a handful of our kids struggle to know how their going to eat unless their at school because of their situations home. They never know if there will be food. This is not something they are advertising but they will ask for food, wonder if there will be team meals throughout the week just so they can gage what to expect throughout their week. As a coach you try to do everything in your power to have something to provide for them throughout the week. At the local high school I work at our athletic director partners with a local food bank called the Hopscotch foundation. the Hopscotch Foundation will come by at least once a month with a van full of food, drinks, snakes and whatever else they can provide for our kids. They will even make sandwiches for post game meals if ordered in advance. It is a great foundation for our local schools in the Portland area because of poverty some of these kids go through. It gives our kids the opportunity to not have to worry about eating and also creates one less stressor for them in they're lives. Which is something we all try to achieve as coaches and teachers.

 Another great thing that our local high school does is provide summer meals at high school cafeteria's. From June 20-August 20 PPS nutrition services serves Breakfast and Lunch at local high schools for all stu
dents in the distract with a valid ID. This is such a great opportunity for our kids to be able to eat free of charge at there local school. At the high school I coach at we run a summer conditioning work out from 9:30-11:30 4 days a week and our kids benefit from this greatly because breakfast is from 8-9am and lunch is from 12:00-1:00pm. So our kids can wake up and head to the school to eat breakfast, complete there workout with there teammates and then head back up to the cafeteria for lunch. They get the nutrition they need for the workout and then food to re fuel there bodies after. As a coach we are proud that our schools do that because it gives our kids an opportunity that they wouldn't normally have.

At the high school I work at I am proud to say we try to help our kids in anyway we can and those are a few examples of things we do. Everything is for the kids and to help them to succeed in life! Our youth is the foundation of our future and we need to invest in them. By helping all walks of life we can help do that. Here is a link to help a a Foundation like HopScotch continue to do great things in our local community. Link Below!

http://www.hopscotchfoundation.com