North Mason Coalition feeds people in need

On Monday morning, volunteers for the North Mason Coalition of Churches and Community were assembling boxes with nonperishable foods such as bread, cereal, beans, potatoes, carrots, onions and eggs at the Lodge next to Christ Lutheran Church between Belfair and Tahuya.

The next day, they added perishable items such as milk and chicken to be picked up by families in need as part of the nonprofit group's Food for Kids Vacation Break Nutrition Boxes program.

The summer boxes end Aug. 29, with school starting Aug. 30. That's when the group transitions to its Food for Kids Backpacks Program.

In other words, the coalition works year-round to help people.

Francine McKinley, the director of the Foods for Kids program, is a native of Mason County who worked as a special education instructor in New Jersey before returning. She retired in 2011 and started volunteering her time to the coalition.

"Hungry kids don't learn very well," McKinley said.

About 75 percent of the recipients are Hispanic families, she said.

The idea for the coalition came in 2006 when representatives from four or five churches decided they could work together on a food program, said Lynn Coffman, one of the founders and who still volunteers. "We said, 'There's hungry kids out there,'"she recalled.

The coalition members put peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and fruit such as apples in brown bags and went out looking for hungry people.

"It didn't work at all," Coffman said. Most of the brown bag lunches were given away to construction workers and people at parks, she said.

The coalition worked to get the word out on signs and began distributing the lunches in the Belfair Elementary School parking lot. The group started putting together summer backpack-filled food during the summers in about 2010 before switching to paper bags. In 2018, the group started delivering meals to the homes of about 35 children in need, and the number reached 200, she said.

When the COVID pandemic struck in early 2020, the coalition stopped home food deliveries, so families in need started coming to the lodge on Tuesdays to pick up food during the summer.

With the Food for Kids Backpack program, about 160 children in the North Mason and Grapeview school districts receive meals to take home for the weekend.

The coalition buys food at Winco, Costco and the U.S. Chef Store in Bremerton, and during sales at local stores.

It receives money from such organizations as the Skookum Rotary Club.

The participating churches are Belfair Community Church, Christ Lutheran Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, North Bay Lutheran Community Church, Prince of Peace Catholic Church, St. Hughes Episcopal Church and St. Nicolas Episcopal Church. The group is also supported by the Allyn Community Association, the Grapeview Community Association, the Tahuya Community Club and United Way of Mason County.

Many of the volunteers are in their 70s.

Anyone who wants to donate their time or money can contact McKinley at 360-275-4395 or [email protected], or Barbara Boad at [email protected], or email [email protected]. Checks can also be mailed to NMCCC, P.O. Box 1331, Belfair 98528.