Help feed hungry children here with MUST Ministries

With 85,800 students eligible for the free and reduced lunch program in Gwinnett, MUST Ministries is working to rescue hungry children again this summer by providing and delivering sack lunches to various housing neighborhoods. 

“This is our third year to provide meals in Gwinnett,” said Sherry Duncan, MUST coordinator for Gwinnett. “We plan to serve 800 children totaling 40,000 meals, but we need community support,” she said.

Lunches are made by churches, businesses, clubs, neighborhoods, sports teams and families who want to help. A detailed list of what goes in each lunch and the daily menu is posted on the MUST web site at www.mustministries.org, she explained. Then the lunches are taken to host sites where packers and checkers perform a quality control check, making sure each lunch has a sandwich, a sweet, a salty and a juice box. Sandwiches are repacked in bread sleeves after being assembled and put in cold storage, so they must be added to the sack just before delivery.

“One of the most meaningful ways to volunteer is to become a driver,” Duncan said. Each week day, the drivers load their cars with the lunches and drive a pre-appointed route where children wait for the meal. “When they see us, it’s like Christmas! The children come running and the driver and a helper distribute the lunches. On Fridays, we also hand out free books for the children to help them continue to read during the summer.”

Eighteen summers ago, a teacher came to MUST who was concerned about what her students would eat during vacation. She asked MUST to provide the meals and she would personally deliver them to her students. She helped 25 children that summer, but today, the MUST program spans eight counties. What is the sack lunch goal? 250,000!

People who want to participate in this important project can also donate online on the MUST web site or donate supplies. The ministry needs peanut butter, jelly, bread, juice boxes, individually packed salty snacks and sweet snacks, baggies and paper bags. “Even your children can decorate a lunch bag for another child,” Duncan said. “It’s an easy way to get your whole family involved in helping others.”

We recently spoke to a teenager who told us she used to walk a mile to get a MUST sack lunch in the summers. She lived with an older sister and brother, but they had no food. She said the MUST team not only brought nourishment, but also encouragement, telling her that God loved her and was going to take care of her. She says MUST helped her become the young lady she is today, a strong, confident person happily adopted and doing well.

MUST is grateful to the host sites in Gwinnett who are working hard to provide some of the volunteers and space to support the outreach. Special thanks to the staff and congregations at Mt. Carmel United Methodist Church, Lilburn First Baptist Church and Lawrenceville United Methodist Church.

For more information on how to help in Gwinnett, please email sduncan@mustministries.org.