All 95 members of the student body and many of the approximately 50 staff of the Verde Valley School partnered with Manzanita Outreach, the Rotary Club of Sedona Village and the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona Foundation to prepare snack boxes for Manzanita Outreach on Thursday, Aug. 24, as part of the school’s orientation week.
“I love helping out with food packing,” 17-year-old VVS student Laura Shimkis said. “I enjoy it because I’ve experienced food insecurity and it’s good to give back to the people who helped me out. When I was little we grew up in [the] suburbs and didn’t have much money, so we would always get food bank donations. That helped me and my family move out here and progress in the world and come to school here.”
“I enjoy working together with all my friends and my classmates, we’ve got a really good system going on out here,” 17-year-old VVS student Isac Wagner said. “At the end of the three hours, we have made a significant amount of meals and packed food that will impact someone else’s life. It’s really cool to see that just our little community of 100 people can do so much.”
The boxes will be used as part of Manzanita’s Packs for Teachers program, which provides teachers at all public and private schools in the Verde Valley with boxes containing a variety of individually-wrapped snack items for distribution to children in the classroom.
“[The MO Packs for Teachers] program is currently serving 43 schools and youth programs — over 550 teachers and over 8,000 of our community’s youth — in the Verde Valley,” Manzanita’s website states.
The only school that has not received boxes is Verde Valley School, which wanted to participate in the program by volunteering. In three hours, VVS staff and students packed 1,500 boxes, which Manzanita executive director Ben Burke said will cover from two and a half to three months’ worth of distributions. The annual cost of the snack program is $160,000.
“In 2021, we heard from teachers about a major gap in food assistance, in-classroom nutrition for hungry kids,” Burke said in a press release. “We believe that kids deserve to have proper nutrition regardless of their household financial situation, but we don’t think it’s right that the financial burden be placed on teachers. We developed this program — MO Packs for Teachers — to fill this gap.”
“In 2019, VVS and Manzanita joined forces in Brady Hall for the first time to pack an incredible 40,000 meals in just two hours for Kids Against Hunger,” VVS Global Goals Program director Caroline Diehl said. “We had a similar event scheduled for early April 2020, but that event wasn’t possible with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and VVS transitioning to online learning. In March 2022, we were finally able to join forces again for a huge packing event. Manzanita had been providing snack boxes to teachers at local schools since February of 2021 and expanded the program in 2022 to reach every elementary and middle school in the Verde Valley.”
VVS will be holding two additional packing events this year as part of the school’s Global Goals Program. Students also assist with packing Manzanita boxes that are given to Verde Valley families during its drive-up distribution events.
“We [also] work with the Tewa Holiday project,” Diehl said. “That is for the Tewa and Hopi reservations in December over the holidays and they get the turkey and all the fixings for a holiday meal and some food staples. Then we also do a free brand-new coats for kids drive for kids up on their reservation.”
“It’s super gratifying to start off the school year with a big activity like this, given that one of our founding principles of the school is service to humanity with a winning spirit,” VVS Head of School Ben Lee said. “Our kids are excited because if we meet our goal [of 1,500 snack packs], we will have packed an incredible amount for kids all over the Verde Valley, and it’s really satisfying. We’re grateful for the opportunity to serve others.”
The Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation gave Manzanita and VVS a $9,000 grant to help underwrite the food cost.
“[We] love Manzanita Outreach and how they have identified this gap in the food chain,” corporate giving manager Jenny Aho said. “[This] allows them to keep students full without costing teachers money for funding their own snacks or schools having to pay. It’s a neat way for us to give back. Then we have 25 employees here from both our Phoenix and Flagstaff offices. They’re volunteering through our Blue Gives Back program, where we give every employee eight paid volunteer hours [per year], so they’re here serving the community serving on behalf of Blue.”
Demand from Verde Valley residents for Manzanita Outreach’s food distributions has increased 60% since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic response in May and June 2020. Burke attributed the increase to the rising cost of living and inflation affecting working families, and the demand for the Packs for Teachers has risen along with that for the rest of Manzanita’s services.
“It’s getting busier and busier,” Manzanita warehouse manager Jimmie Treakle said. “We’re just trying to meet the demand no matter what it is. So no matter what the increase is, we’re willing to just take it head on no matter what.”
“Manzanita Outreach has improved the educational experiences of our students,” West Sedona School fifth-grade teacher Dani Beinfest said in a press release. “The snack boxes are building healthy eating habits and allowing students to operate with full stomachs. I witnessed the difference when my students were able to devote 100% to thinking about learning rather than hunger.”
