Redcliff Family Foods helps out PRSD with food donations

By Justin Seward

Commentator/Courier

Redcliff Family Foods has stepped up to the plate in a time of crisis worldwide with COVID-19.
The town’s grocery store decided to help its immediate community by supplying some food such as pasta noodles, dry pasta, juice and cereal to I.F. Cox School’s food bags.
There were 130 packages that went out to families in need across Prairie Rose Division.
“We just donated a whole bunch of groceries to I.F. Cox School. They made up gift bags for people in need,” said Sue MaCinnis, store manager .
“The owners here are a part of the community and they’ll never see anybody go hungry. They go above and beyond if anybody need anything, they’re the first ones here to donate.”
MaCinnis says if there were more initiatives similar to the school’s then they would consider donating more.
Carol Carlson, PRSD’s coordinator of student services, says the initiative is a continued way of using the nutrition grant to help families in need.
“When this all hit and the schools closed, we decided to use that grant money to target our families that we knew needed to have continued support,” she said.
“Basically with Redcliff Family Foods, when they heard that we were doing this, they donated food to our cause and they partnered with us to provide food when we have certain things that we need.”
Carlson says with the food that hopefully it will allow parents to be able to give them more settled time while at home with their children and accessing the supports educationally.
“We’ve also provided a lot of education through this nutrition program,” she said.
“We actually do small videos and set them up with qr codes,so all parents have to do is take their cell phones, scan them, and get nutritional information.”
The food bags are being done weekly and being bused across the district every along with the learning material.
Redcliff area is done on Wednesdays and the rest of the district on Fridays.
“We also appreciate our partnerships with Alberta Health Services, community businesses such as Redcliff Family Foods and the food bank,” said Carlson.
“Prairie Rose School Division teachers have been working hard to ensure a smooth transition for our students through providing various alternate means of access to learning. Our support staff and administration have been very creative in redirecting our existing resource, including our mental health and support staff to support our students and our families, including the nutrition program.”
The plan will be to make up the food bags at I.F. Cox School because of the building having the facility to do the bags in as well as the location and the staff available.

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