Rudy Reuttiger, University of Notre Dame football legend and subject of the 1993 film Rudy, speaks at a fundraiser for Friday Fare. Photos courtesy of Westerville City Schools and Westerville Christian Church
In 2008, Westerville Christian Church was looking for a way to celebrate the anniversary of its founding in 1968.
It being the 40th anniversary, church leaders decided to show the Westerville community 40 ways the church cared, naming the entire effort WC Cares. And one of the programs that came out of WC Cares, and has flourished since its inception, is Friday Fare.
As part of the program, volunteers gather bags of food for students whose families struggle to put meals on the table on the weekends, and send these students home every Friday with two meals that each feed a family of four.
“Our kids that benefit from the bags come down on Fridays and take the bags home,” says Sherry Birchem, Pointview Elementary School principal. “They are usually very, very excited to get the bags.”
Friday Fare started in two schools and gave out a total of six bags of food in 2008. Now, the program has expanded to 14 schools in the Westerville community and 16 schools total, and sends home close to 100 bags every week.
The rapid growth of the program has been “both a positive and a negative,” says Friday Fare coordinator Tracy Rush.
“We’re very grateful that we’re able to serve. The people at the church are incredibly generous,” Rush says. “The flip side of that is, it’s sad and it’s hard that the need has grown so much in Westerville, and I don’t think a lot of folks understand how prolific the need is.”
Rush says the program provided just north of 3,500 bags of food in 2015. At an average cost of $16 a bag, Friday Fare now provides more than $50,000 in aid to the Westerville community every year.
John Miller of Westerville Christian Church and Sherry Birchem of Pointview Elementary School help prepare bags of food for the Friday Fare program
“I think that their dedication to the kids, the community and the families, and making sure that their basic needs are met – it’s critical,” Birchem says.
In order to protect the privacy of students who receive bags of food, their names and information are never given to Friday Fare volunteers.
“It’s trust between the schools and us,” Rush says. “What typically happens is a guidance counselor at one school talks to a guidance counselor at another school … and they say, ‘We have a need. We have these kids who, even though we’re referring them to (Westerville Area Resource Ministry), even though we’re doing all we can to make sure that their needs are being met and they can come to school not hungry and ready to learn, it’s still not quite cutting it.’”
Students are referred to the program by school officials, teachers or guidance counselors. The families of the students are then contacted to “make sure they want to participate in the program,” Birchem says.
“They don’t have to meet any certain criteria,” Birchem says. “We have an idea of students that would benefit, but … we don’t look to see if they’re receiving any state benefits or any of that.”
Westerville Christian Church will offer its annual gift shop through the Friday Fare program Dec. 9-10.
Checks sent to the church are one way to get involved and donate to Friday Fare. For more information on upcoming food drives or a list of items that can be donated, email Tracy Rush at tracy@wcchurch.life.
Zachary Konno is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.
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