A new food program at a San Francisco middle school has rolled out a free campus grocery store for students to take advantage of for themselves and their families. The student store at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Academic Middle School is a collaboration among Amazon, the YMCA of Greater San Francisco , and the non-profit Goodr Foundation , which takes surplus food and delivers it to those in need. Goodr CEO Marli Crowe was at the school in the city's Bayview neighborhood Monday morning making sure the store's debut would wow the students. MLK Jr.
students are the first on the West Coast to have a store packed with dairy, produce and shelf staples at their fingertips. Crowe says data shows this area of the city has become a food desert, making it difficult for kids to get a nutritious meal. A lot of the families of these students, unfortunately, are economically disadvantaged," said Crowe.
"It's a very diverse school, so I think we are feeding a lot of diverse students. So I believe the school is about 40% Asian and about 30% Latino so that's what we encounter when we're ordering stuff that is culturally relevant to them." The store will be available to students twice a month.
Educators say they want to focus not only on academics but the child as a whole - when a child is hungry even the best teachers won't help. "[The students] can focus on learning and not on where their next meal is coming from, and they can focus on helping their families," said Crowe. "We do see a lot of.