ORLANDO, Fla. — School food pantries in lower-income parts of Orange County, home to Orlando, are set to grow after the Foundation for Orange County Public Schools landed a $400,000 grant to help students and their families get more healthy food.
The foundation announced the award on Tuesday, Nov. 3. The money comes from the Florida Blue Foundation and will fund a program the foundation calls its Food Pantry Capacity and Access Expansion Initiative. That effort aims to improve pantry storage, equipment and staffing so campuses can serve more families who are short on food.
The idea is to work through a place families already trust, their neighborhood school, and to ease problems at home that can keep children from being ready to learn. The foundation has not yet said which schools will benefit, how many households the effort will reach or when the expanded service will start.
The Orange County award is part of a larger package. In September, during Hunger Action Month, the Florida Blue Foundation committed $3.1 million to eight food programs around the state, with grantees working in counties including Orange, Pinellas, Broward, Leon and Palm Beach. Other recipients serve farmworkers, homeless adults, uninsured patients at free clinics and rural residents.
The insurer’s charity ties the grants to health, noting that steady access to nutritious food matters for people managing diabetes, high blood pressure or heart disease. It estimates about 3.6 million Floridians face food insecurity, more than 900,000 of them children.
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