05 Nov YMCA of Greater Kansas City Receives $10,000 Grant from General Mills Foundation, Hometown Giving

YMCA of Greater Kansas City recently received a grant for $10,000 from the General Mills Foundation Hometown Giving to support the Y’s Food Program.

The Y’s Food Program consists of open meal distribution sites, five-component meals for youth enrolled in Y-Club afterschool care, and Saturday breakfasts. The Y intends to serve 90,000 meals to 7,500 children in the next 12 months. The program helps ensure that healthy food is available, adequate, accessible, affordable, and appropriate for children experiencing food insecurity. It is the Y’s goal to offer five-component meals and serve fresh produce with meals as often as possible.

The Y offers afterschool meals for any child from the community under age 18 at three Y centers in Jackson (MO) and Wyandotte (KS) counties. Two of these centers serve meals twice a week and one serves meals daily. A fourth Y, the North Kansas City (NKC Y) in Clay County (MO) will launch meal service on Saturday mornings this spring. The NKC Y intends to serve daily meals in the summer and is planning to open a food pantry in 2019 that will help supply other Y center meal sites, as well as a community garden and farmers’ market. The Y offers afterschool meals to school-age youth at 20 Y club afterschool sites in Jackson (MO), Wyandotte (KS), and Johnson (KS) counties and four summer camp locations as of this summer.

Children enrolled in Y club receive nutrition education as part of the curriculum framework. The two Y locations that have kitchen facilities (Linwood and NKC Ys) will offer nutrition education classes.

The YMCA of Greater Kansas City (the Kansas City Y) was founded in 1860. Founded as the seventh YMCA in the North American YMCA of the USA (Y-USA) movement, the Kansas City Y has over 158 years of experience in meeting the holistic needs of community members of all ages.  The Y improves the quality of people’s lives by helping them develop healthy habits; helping children connect to caring adults through sports and youth development programs; and by providing opportunities to meet new people and serve the community. The Kansas City Y impacts more than 140,000 unique individuals annually at 13 membership centers and 100 program sites serving Jackson, Clay, and Platte counties in Missouri, and Wyandotte and Johnson counties in Kansas.