One of the largest events taking place in the Verde Valley is often Manzanita Outreach’s Saturday morning food distribution at Mingus Union High School at 406 S. Sixth Street in Cottonwood, when as many as 3,000 residents and 800 vehicles may show up.

“We started as an idea in 2018 and we are now the largest food assistance provider in the county and one of the largest rural food assistance providers in the country,” Manzanita’s executive director Ben Burke told the Rotary Club of Sedona Red Rocks during their Wednesday, Aug. 16 meeting at the Sedona Public Library. “Part of that is the need in the community and it’s primarily due — at least based on surveys that we get back and common sense — due to the higher cost of living, increased costs of groceries and housing, relative to disposable income.”

To assist the nonprofit, the Rotary Club of Sedona Red Rocks presented Manzanita with a check for the first installment of a $3,152 contribution during the meeting. In 2022, Rotarydonated an equal amount to the program.

The award consisted of $2,000 from Rotary District 5495, which covers Northern Arizona, and $1,152 from the Rotary Club of Sedona Red Rocks. Manzanita’s annual cost for the school supply program is $135,000.

The money will go toward the School Supplies For Teachers Program, which provides over 350 Verde Valley teachers across 14 schools with consumable supplies such as scissors, glue, pens and pencils. These supplies are distributed in cabinets that Manzanita provides to schools and keeps restocked, enabling teachers and staff to access needed supplies at any time without signing them out or requesting reimbursement.

The National Education Association estimated in 2022 that “over 90% of teachers spend their own money on school supplies and other items their students need to succeed,” and that teachers annually spent around $500 of their own funds on school supplies.

When Manzanita started the School Supplies for Teachers program, it surveyed 150 area teachers to find out how they were spending that money. Burke said that Manzanita’s survey showed that 80% of teachers’ in-classroom spending went toward consumable supplies that are now readily available in the cabinets.

“It’s a wonderful resource for the entire school community,” said Sedona Charter School Executive Director Amy Fultz. “It’s so well designed, it comes in this big tool chest. You open up a drawer, and it’s filled with items that are used in all classrooms [along with] Kleenex and little containers of deodorant. We didn’t even realize how much we would use it until we had it. They come once a month and refill it. It’s a remarkable resource that probably gets used every day at our school.”

“[Manzanita Outreach] also bring snack boxes that are filled with a variety of different snacks that the kids can choose from,” Fultz added. “In fact, we just had a couple of girls in the office, and they were like ‘we forgot our snack today, can we get something out of the snack box’ … It’s really convenient, and really helpful.”

Manzanita’s snack program supplies every public or private school in the Verde Valley, with the exception of the Verde Valley School in theVillage of Oak Creek.

“Ultimately, the burden many times falls upon teachers to figure things out of their own pocket,” Burke said. “The gap we found was in classroom snacks. That came about when we had teachers in 2021, who were from across the Verde Valley, coming to our food sharing events picking up food and bringing it into the classrooms for their students. We thought that was odd and thought that that might indicate some gap.”

Despite the success of the school supply cabinets, Burke emphasized that food distribution is still Manzanita’s main objective. The demand for food assistance from his organization has grown by 50% in recent years.

“We do 4,000 individual family food distributions every month,” Burke said. “That is up from the height of COVID [which] was about 2,500 [during] the absolute peak of 2020 [May and June]. We seem to be at a two month plateau at about 4,000. But I know that that’ll eventually increase again.”