As seen on CAI | By Elspeth Hay
Tammy Leone, Executive Director of Cape Kid Meals. Photo by Elspeth Hay.
I’m standing with Tammy Leone in a large open building in Cotuit full of food and bustling with volunteers. Everyone’s here packing bags of prepackaged foods for the non-profit Cape Kid Meals.
“The program was started in 2014 by Pastor David Johnson of Grace Church,” Tammy explained. “His wife worked at one of the elementary schools and had heard about a child coming into school hungry over the weekend. And through his church, he’s done a lot of trips and done a lot of missions overseas and in other countries and didn’t realize there was such a hunger problem in our own community.”
In fact, Barnstable County has one of the highest child food insecurity rates in Massachusetts. Today, Tammy Leone is Executive Director of Cape Kid Meals and says it’s grown quite a bit since Pastor Johnson first reached out to the elementary schools in his community of Dennis.CAI
“They started that fall with a backpack program. So the bags get put into the schools at a designated area and then the teachers or the guidance counselors or adjustment counselors in the schools, then to distribute them to the students,” she explained.
