There are enough things children have to worry about, and according to Kalab Stokes, school lunch balances shouldn’t be one of them.
Recent data shows that Utah’s public schools have accumulated nearly $3 million unpaid school lunch balances. And while Utah legislators are considering a bill that could offset much of that, as it stands, many Utah students are going without lunch because they simply can’t afford it.
After seeing the increase in these balances, particularly following schools offering free lunches due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Stokes said wanted to help. So, four years ago, he initiated a foundation titled Feed the Kids, where he teams up with businesses to raise funds to pay off lunch balances. To date, the foundation has donated tens of thousands of dollars to pay off lunch balances.
“Last week, I went and donated $6,500 to Nebo School District,” he said. “That covered 185 negative school lunch accounts for kids throughout various schools within the school district. We know that life is hard sometimes because of various reasons — maybe it’s health, a parent or family member gets sick or maybe a loss of a job or you’re not able to have a job that pays at the same rate. Whatever it may be, our philosophy is if we can rally as a community and help those who are in need then we’re doing our part.”
Stokes knows firsthand what it’s like to be on the receiving end. When he was a teenager, he had a bad injury that required severe and costly medical attention. He said that through the help of community donation and outreach, he was able to get the care he needed.
“I’m a Shriners kid,” he said. “Even though I’m 45 years old, I still say I’m a Shriners kid. When I was a freshman in high school, I broke my leg really badly. Ultimately, I needed to have surgery on my leg and was on the receiving end of financial assistance to help pay for medical bills to Shriners. This really changed my life and I knew from that moment that I wanted to help change other people’s lives.”
Stokes said that he has long wanted to find a way to pay it forward and when he saw what has been happening with school lunches over the past few years, he knew that this was the perfect place to make a difference.
“Seeing what happened when we were in the middle of COVID where they made lunch free for everyone, I knew that it wasn’t sustainable,” he said. “You can’t have lunch free for everybody because you can’t have it built into the budget. Eventually that’s going to run out and then we’re going to be back to the same position we were before COVID happened, so this is where I saw a need.”
Stokes explained that many of the children and families he helps qualify for free or reduced lunch, but for whatever reason, they were delayed in getting on the program, and still have balances carried over. There are also many instances where families don’t qualify due to the qualifications simply not following the rate of inflation.
In fact, for a family of six, the annual household income cannot exceed $54,548 in order to qualify for free lunch in the state of Utah.
While a large portion of the balances Feed the Kids pays for are in Nebo School District, there are times when the foundation is directed to families in need in other parts of the state. Stokes spoke candidly about helping a family in another county pay off lunch balances, noting how good it felt to see how Feed the Kids is changing lives.
“In December, we had an opportunity where somebody in the community called me and said they knew a single mom who had five kids and could really use some help paying their school lunch accounts,” Stokes recalled. “I drove into Salt Lake and went to each one of the schools and went to the lunch clerk and said, ‘I want to put $200 in each one of the kids’ accounts.’ The message that we received from the mom was so heartfelt and raw. She was a single mom of five kids (a high schooler, two middle schoolers and two elementary kids), and she didn’t have food at home to send with them for home lunch, and the older three weren’t eating because they knew that they were already in the hole. She said that it changed everything for them knowing that the kids could go to school and eat and not have to worry about it. You never know how a little bit of kindness affects people later down the road in the future.”
Feed the Kids holds fundraising events throughout the year and is always accepting donations. To know more, go to feedthekidsfoundation.org.
