A20 SUNDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2012 WWW.KANSASCITY.COMFROM THE COVER | THE KANSAS CITY STAR.

and staff knew that many oftheir students’ families strug-gle and that some of them areso poor that many times theygo days without dinner.

About a third of the school’s70 students, in kindergartenthrough fifth grade, come fromhomes where “sometimesthere’s food and sometimesthere’s not,” said Principal JoeSchramp. “The breakfast andlunch they get at school are of-ten the only meals many geteach day.”

Although Harvesters pro-vides 17,000 BackSnack packseach Friday to students in a26-county area, the programserves only public schools; itdoesn’t go to schools thatcharge tuition, even when ma-ny students’ enrollment feesare paid by scholarships fromother nonprofit agencies, as isthe case at Guadalupe.

Sanchez-Chastain grew up inKansas City’s Southwest Bou-levard area. Her children wentto Guadalupe, and she’s beenthe secretary there for abouttwo decades.

Though she and others knewmany of the families’ stories,they didn’t realize just how badthings were for some of them.What they discovered was thatin the week before Thanksgiv-ing, 25 families didn’t haveenough food to get themthrough the long break fromschool.

At a school board meetingthe Tuesday before Thanksgiv-ing, Schramp told a friend thestory of the little girl smugglingfruit from the cafeteria becauseshe was hungry.

The friend, Jeremy Lillig, isthe director of Bright Futures,which raises scholarship mon-ey for needy children to attendurban-core Catholic schools inKansas City, including Guada-lupe. He pulled out his cellphone and posted the tale onhis Facebook page.

He wasn’t sure if anyonewould respond.

Chasing away winter’scold

Across the metro area, sto-ries of families going without— food, electricity, gas, water— play out every day, in everycounty.

That’s why Kelli, a mother oftwo featured in The Star’s hun-ger series this month, couldn’tbelieve it when people readabout her family and weretouched. She and her kids livein a rented three-bedroomhome on the East Side.

Their gas had been turnedoff for months, and with wintercoming, all she could do wasplan to get more blankets froma food pantry to cover the win-dows. How would she keep herchildren warm when theweather turned frigid?

And when it comes to food,she’s never sure if they’ll haveenough, especially if she can’tget to a pantry.

She told her story to showwhat some families go through,to share how much her familyis helped by the weekend Back-Snacks from Harvesters andthe guidance and support ofOperation Breakthrough’s Sis-ter Berta Sailer. Never did Kellithink people would respond.

But this is Kansas City, Sailersaid.

“People do want to help,” shesaid. “And they did.”

One woman wrote: “I wouldlove to stock their pantry orfridge or just donate cash.” An-other reader said: “I have this$50 bill burning a hole in mypocket. How can I get somecash to Kelli’s family?”

Others asked if she could usehelp with her gas bill. Howabout gift cards for food? OrChristmas presents for her sonand daughter?

“To me, this is my daily life,how we live,” Kelli said recent-ly. “But I guess it shockedthem. … When you tell some-one you’re working, they thinkyou’re fine.”

Sailer said she has manyworking families who are try-ing to pay all the bills and putfood on the table. Too oftenthey run short.

Sailer spoke with peoplewho dropped off money tohelp pay Kelli’s gas bill. Sometalked of the food insecuritydescribed in other stories.

“One woman told me shejust didn’t know that kids weregoing hungry,” Sailer said. An-

other woman offered to helpmoms at Operation Break-through prepare to take theirGED.

Within a week or so afterKelli’s story ran in the newspa-per, people had donatedenough to pay her $512.89 gasbill. The utility turned Kelli’sgas back on Thursday, but thenshe discovered the furnacedidn’t work. Now she hopesher landlord will fix the fur-nace by Christmas so the fami-ly will have heat.

“We’ll be together andwarm,” said Kelli, adding howgrateful, and surprised, she wasfor the help from strangers. “Iwas in shock, really. I thoughtmy situation was helpless. …This will brighten our Christ-mas.”

Soccer for a causeWhen the holidays come

around, Lori Mallory of Over-land Park likes to give her trip-let sons money to help otherpeople. They can pick a familyto help or give money to a non-profit. Last year she called itThe Big Give.

“I’ve always wanted to teachthem it’s important to giveback,” Mallory said.

Last Christmas, she and herteenage boys decided that may-be they could do somethingbigger with the money, some-

thing that would last longerthan the Christmas season.

Mallory and her boys got tothinking. Maybe they couldcreate an organization, a non-profit corporation, that wouldraise money they could give toHarvesters. They could call itjustONE, Mallory suggested,going off the idea that just oneperson can change things.

“My mom is a big thinker,”said her son, Sam Mallory, 16.“She thinks of big ideas.”

The three brothers, Sam, Joeand Tucker, took it from there.Each called up a couple of bud-dies and told them the idea. Be-fore long, nine teenage boysfrom the Blue Valley districtwere researching the biggestissues facing families andyoung people.

Whatever they raisedthrough soccer tournamentswould go to a specific charity.

The causes that topped theirlist? A healthy water supply.Homelessness. Hunger.

In their research, the teensdiscovered that thousands ofarea children often don’t haveenough food at home. That’seven the case for parts of John-son County, where the teenslive.

Childhood hunger ended upwinning out.

“What we realized is we livein a very privileged area wherewe don’t see hungry kids,” saidTyler Kunkel, 16. He andSamMallory are co-presidents ofjustONE. “Our friends aren’thungry, we’re not hungry, but 1in 5 kids in our region is.”

The teens’ first soccer tour-

nament is scheduled for Jan. 2.This is where they’ll work thekinks out and learn what run-ning a tournament will entail.They don’t think they’ll make alot on this first one, but 100percent of the profits will go toHarvesters.

The teens (eight of them areactive in the organization) haveapplied the paperwork to makejustONE a 501(c) 3 tax-exemptorganization.

As their tournaments get big-ger, they plan to give 55 percentof what they make to Harvest-ers and soon will meet with thefood bank to discuss how themoney can help young people.They’ll put most of the restback toward growing justONE.

“We’re kind of giving back topeople our age,” Sam Mallorysaid.

Tyler said they couldn’t turntheir backs on hunger.

“We live in such a great area,things like this shouldn’t goon,” he said. “Kids shouldn’t begoing hungry.”

A flash food driveAnd at Guadalupe?When Lillig put his post on

Facebook, he couldn’t acceptthe idea that at least 25 familieswere heading into a five-dayThanksgiving weekend with-out enough food.

But would anyone else careenough to lend a hand?

Within seconds, he had hisanswer. His Facebook page ex-ploded.

“It breaks my heart,” onefriend posted. “If they (stu-dents) aren’t eating, that meanstheir families aren’t either. Letme know how we can help.”

Within minutes, the Face-book friends had hatched aplan to collect a few bags offood to drop off the next day.

Lillig’s friends posted ontheir Facebook pages. Theirfriends posted it on their pages.Before Lillig knew it, he and hisfriends — a virtual community— had launched a flash fooddrive.

“About 1 a.m. that night oneof my colleagues, Allison Hiatt,called and woke me from adead sleep to tell me peoplewere still ringing her doorbellto leave food for the childrenon her porch,” Lillig said.

School secretary Sanchez-Chastain, who was supposed tobe off that Wednesday beforeThanksgiving but went in just

HUNGER: Facebook post prompts food donations at Guadalupe schoolFROM A1

KEITH MYERS | THE KANSAS CITY STAR

A Facebook message began a procession of donors with food for children at Our Lady ofGuadalupe School on the West Side. Principal Joe Schramp looked over some of the food,which is being used to start a pantry.

SEE DONORS | A21

HOW TO HELPFor the third year, TheStar is partnering withHarvesters to be host ofa virtual food drive. Allmoney raised will go toHarvesters’ BackSnackprogram for kids. Go tofeedingkckids.harvesters.org to make adonation.

If you’d like, you candesignate your donationin the honor or memoryof a family member orfriend. The Star willpublish the dedicationson Christmas Day.Dedications need to bein by 5 p.m. today toappear in the Christmaspaper.

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