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As a people of faith, we are called to care for others. This is our passion. Share your passion to care for others by joining us in Mobile Meals, meals to the elderly at Middletown’s Senior Citizen Housing. We deliver meals and company on the fourth Tuesday of the month. Call the church office at (732) 671-1905 to learn more.
The Calico Cat Thrift Shop is a store operated by the Community Outreach Group that sells gently used items to persons who cannot afford even discount prices. The COG also has a food pantry and an emergency assistance program. If you have a few hours during the week, the Calico Cat could use your help. Call (732) 671-0550 if you would like to help in this important ministry.
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Recently, the Senate unanimously passed the Child Nutrition Reauthorization, a bill that would do just about everything to improve the school lunch program – except fund it. This is no small exception, considering that a tiny percentage of schools are currently able to follow the USDA’s nutrition regulations. How will they be able to comply with improved regulations with only six additional cents per lunch? And, although it passed in the Senate, the bill may still die on the House floor because some in Congress think even six cents is too much.
Both the House and Senate bills provide for direct certification, or automatically enrolling kids for free or reduced cost lunches if they are also enrolled in other federal programs (like food stamps) that have the same enrollment requirements. This reduces the paperwork burdens for schools, allowing them to spend more on food and less on bureaucracy. It also helps enroll more children who qualify into the lunch program. Also terrific is the recognition by the government that in high poverty areas, it might be cheaper for a school to provide free lunch to all of the students instead of processing the paperwork for those who are eligible. In such cases, schools are given the option to extend free lunch to all students, expanding the number of hungry kids who receive meals while alleviating the stigma that might come with accepting a free lunch.
How can we extend the table to poor children, many of whom rely on the free school lunch as their main meal of the day? There are two U.S. representatives serving Middletown and the surrounding area: Rep. Rush Holt and Rep. Frank Pallone. You can find out which one is yours by going to www.house.gov/writerep and clicking in your zip code and the four digit number that follows the five digit zip code.
This is an election year. Get their ear!
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