Many hands, much food for Thoreau kids

Volunteers pack 50 food bags at Westminster Presbyterian Church to put in Thoreau Elementary School students' lockers.. (Photo by Scott Girard)

By Phil Haslanger
Collaboration Project Story Team

Amidst the many ways that congregations have found ways to collaborate with each other and local agencies to serve the community, food has emerged as one common theme. That theme got a particularly nice highlight this week in a story by Cap Times education reporter Scott Girard - 

‘A great example of community’: 
Group starts weekend food bag program for Thoreau students

 An American Family insurance agency in the neighborhood along with Glenwood Moravian Church, Midvale Baptist Church, Temple Beth-El, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Group Health Cooperative and the Nakoma League have worked together to fill bags with meal and snack items for the weekends for the students and their families. Scott tells the story very week, be sure to click through to read his account. 

This is similar to the story we ran in August about the Weekend Nutrition Program on the east side of Madison that involves Lakeview Moravian Community Church, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Lake Edge United Church of Christ, St. Dennis Catholic Church and Lake Edge Lutheran to provide food for students at Schenk Elementary School. 

The Collaboration Project is nearing the end of a multi-congregational food drive this month. There are six congregations competing to see who can gather the most food for area school food pantries and they will work together to sort and pack it on Jan. 30. In the competition are Capital City Church, the Church at Christ Memorial, Covenant Presbyterian Church, Glenwood Moravian Community Church, Madison Church of Christ and Trinity United Methodist Church. And the other groups working on this are the River Food Pantry, Food for Thought and Selfless Ambition. You can read the story we did about the launch of that project here.

And Selfless Ambition has organized churches to work with food pantries at Glenview, Lake View and Leopold elementary schools.  And there are programs like the Community Meal Program at Luke House that have relied on volunteers from many congregations for decades. You can read our story about that her

There are other ways congregations collaborate with each other and with community groups, of course, but providing food - feeding the hungry, as Jesus said in Matthew 25 - seems to be one that particularly has drawn people together.

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