Lunches for Youth Outing

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Goal of Position:

Lunches for Literacy Provider volunteers creates nutritious lunches for the Simpson Housing Services K-5 Literacy Mentoring Program. Students and their mentors have a monthly opportunity to explore the Twin Cities. These experiences include field trips to museums, volunteering, and creative hands on activities like pumpkins carving. Proper nutrition is vital for the students and their mentors to amerce themselves into the experience for the day. Volunteers purchase the food items needed for the lunches. Approximate cost is between $100 - $120.

Timeframe

Delivery dates are the Friday before a particular outing. The ideal time for delivery is between 8:00 am - 2:15 pm.

Location

Deliver Lunches to Bell House - 2100 Pillsbury Ave S. Minneapolis, MN 55404

Shopping List

Food Handling Materials

• Cleaning supplies
• Hand sanitizer if a sink and hand soap is not available in the room
• Cardboard boxes or paper bags for transporting bag lunches
• A few permanent markers

25 Lunches for Literacy Lunches

Your goal is to make hearty and delicious lunches that kids would like to eat. Quality is more important than quantity. The students enjoy roast beef, chicken, turkey, salami, and pastrami. They also enjoy bagels with plain cream cheese. Please do not purchase bologna. No condiments or vegetables. Do not make peanut butter and jelly, chicken salad, or tuna salad sandwiches.

• 25 paper lunch bags
• 25 napkins
• 25 sandwiches - Basic sandwiches / tortilla wraps/bagels
• 25 Juice Boxes - Preferred juice boxes with more juice than sugar.
• 25 Fruit/Vegetable servings; clementine, apple, banana, applesauce, or mini carrots with dip. Please provide utensil, if needed.
• 25 Individually pre-packaged snack; crackers, chips, cheese stick, etc.
• 25 individually pre-packaged treats; cookie, brownie, dried fruit, or chewy granola bar (optional).
• Small individual serving packets of mustard and mayo (optional)

Guidelines

• Minimum number of volunteers: 1.
• Maximum number of volunteers: 15.
• Children/youth groups must have a minimum adult to child ratio of 1:5.

Food Preparation Procedure

1. Carefully clean the food preparation area or cover table with new paper/plastic.
2. Ask that people with long hair tie their hair back.
3. Ask all volunteers to wear hairnets.
4. Ask volunteers to roll up long sleeves.
5. Make sure every person thoroughly washes and dries their hands.
6. Everyone must wear plastic gloves. Please read the following instructions about gloves to your entire group.

You must change your gloves if:

• You touch your face, hair, clothing
• You touch a part of the room that was not sterilized (chair, doorknob, etc.)
• You touch another person
• You use the bathroom
• You cough or sneeze
• Your gloves get ripped or torn

1. If you are working with youth, please ask that they respect the food. Remind them to treat the food as if they were making a sandwich for their best friend. Avoid making thumbprints in the bread, squishing sandwiches into bags, playing with the food, etc.
2. Assemble the sandwiches by placing at least one piece of meat and one piece of cheese between two slices of bread.
3. Place each sandwich in a sandwich bag.
4. Ask volunteers to place napkins, sandwich, fruit, juice box, snack, and treats in the paper lunch bags.
5. Store completed lunches in cold storage for transportation.
6. Thank the volunteers and clean up the work space.
7. Deliver the food to Bell House during our donation hours (see page 1).

Frequently Asked Questions

Can we make more than 25 bag lunches?

Each experience will include 25 students, mentors, and team members, no extra lunches are needed for these events. If you would like to make more than 25 lunches, contact Simpson Housing, for more donation opportunities.

Can extra lunch supplies be donated?

If you have extra individually prepackaged items and would like to donate them, we can use them for other mentoring/tutoring programs.

Can we write notes to include with the food?

This is a very thoughtful gesture, but we do not accept notes. Ink from the notes can run onto the food. It is also challenging to write a message that is appropriate and helpful for the students.

What does Simpson Housing Services need besides lunches?

Our greatest need is for funding to keep our shelter doors open. You can view a full list of our supply needs on our website at http://www.simpsonhousing.org/donate_inkind.html. Contact Christina Giese with questions or for a list of urgent needs.

Why is Literacy Mentoring so important?

Youth who have experienced homelessness often face additional challenges and barriers. Supportive, caring adults are an important resilience factor for all children and are especially important for those who have lived with instability and trauma.

Mentoring helps youth strengthen their confidence, hope, and ability to make thoughtful decisions. They are able to form stronger relationships and communicate better with both peers and adults. Youth with mentors have fewer attendance issues and fewer behavior problems at school. They are less likely to engage in risky behavior, such as drugs or underage drinking, and more likely to graduate from high school and continue their education.

In the context of this program specifically, mentors support youth in building confidence and positive feelings around reading, helping them to be more enthusiastic readers and life-long learners. The positive relationships that mentors have with their mentees also helps youth engage more deeply with new experiences on group outings.

Where can we find out more about homelessness?

• Spent: playspent.org

This activity challenges you to survive for a month by making tough choices as a low-wage worker.

• Wilder Foundation: wilder.org/homelessness.0.html

The Wilder Foundation does statewide research on homelessness. Their detailed studies provide us with much of what we know about homelessness in Minnesota.

• Minnesota Housing Partnership: mhponline.org

The MHP website has in-depth information about housing affordability, as well as opportunities for advocacy and learning.

Contact

For mentoring program details contact Jocelyn Pickreign, Literacy Mentoring Coordinator, at 612.455.0878 or jpickreign@simpsonhousing.org.