FORK moving forward with expansion, campaign

Feed Our Rural Kids Inc. (FORK) has been on the move in recent weeks, expanding its food insecurity assistance beyond the Northland Pines School District and establishing a $1 million capital campaign for its Tomorrow’s Kids Endowment Fund.

FORK will be extending its nutritional support programming into the Phelps School District, which will give children in Phelps the same support provided to youths from Land O’ Lakes, Conover, St. Germain, Sayner, Star Lake and Eagle River.

The plan is to have all programs 100 percent available to children in both school districts by June of this year, ensuring that more food-insecure children have a higher level of success.

The Tomorrow’s Kids Endowment Fund was created last year to meet the chronic long-term challenges faced by the organization. It was first funded by an anonymous $100,000 founding donation, the donors mindful that their generous contribution could create a legacy of hope for generations of youths.

As FORK President Perry Pokrandt put it, investments in our children’s future are not made with the expectation of immediate return. Rather, he said, they are made in hopes of changing the arc of their destiny.

That’s why it is so important that FORK works to assure the sustainability of its programming long into the future, so that such worthwhile efforts to help school-aged children from food-insecure homes is unending.

It is estimated that 22 % of the children in Vilas County live in poverty and that many — more than 200 students in the Northland Pines School District alone — are not getting the wholesome foods and nutrition they need to succeed.

It is our hope that area residents, organizations and businesses in the communities served will help find a way to raise funds to stop childhood hunger for all time.