We provide food for the weekend to nearly 280 Tukwila School District students who meet the McKinney-Vento criteria for homelessness through our Tukwila Weekend SnackPack Program. The McKinney-Vento Act defines homeless children as "individuals who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence." The act provides examples of children who would fall under this definition: * sharing housing due to economic hardship or loss of housing; * living in "motels, hotels, trailer parks, or camp grounds due to lack of alternative accommodations" * living in "emergency or transitional shelters" * "awaiting foster care placement" * nighttime residence is not ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation (e.g. park benches, etc) * living in "cars, parks, public spaces, abandoned buildings, substandard housing, bus or train stations…" In the academic year 2016-2017, 374 students in Tukwila School District met the McKinney-Vento criteria for homelessness. This represents over 12% of the student population. Compare this to a TSD student homeless rate of 1.6% in 2009-2010. Foster HS had 90 McKinney-Vento students (9.7%), Showalter - 79 (11.4%), Thorndyke - 89 (21.3%), Cascade View - 52 (10.4%), and Tukwila - 64 (11.7%). The program began in February 2015 at Thorndyke Elementary and continued to the end of the year. In the fall of 2015 opened a second site at Cascade View Elementary, then began serving Tukwila Elementary fall 2016. This year we added Showalter Middle School and Foster High School. How you can help *We accept any amount of food donation but a strategic way of giving is to buy enough servings of one of the items from our shopping list to feed 200 students and drop the donation off at one of our regular public collection sites: City of Tukwila 6300 Building, Tukwila Community Center, and Inspirus Credit Union. *Set up an Amazon.com Subscribe & Save monthly purchase and ship it to Thrift It! 14404 51st Ave S, Tukwila, WA 98168. Check out our shopping list http://a.co/6X1SpV9 *Checks can be made out to “Still Waters” and mailed to Still Waters: Services for Families in Transition, P.O. Box 88576, Tukwila, WA 98138. Or you can give online at: https://www.tuksnackpack.com/give.html. A recurring donation of $25/month provides weekend meals for one of our McKinney-Vento students for the entire year. *Volunteer to do inventory at our storehouse, assemble “Healthy Additions” items (1:30 pm Wednesdays at Southcenter Community Baptist), assemble SnackPacks (9:00 am Thursdays at Southcenter Community Baptist), distribute (2:00 pm Fridays) SnackPacks at Thorndyke, Cascade View, & Tukwila Elementary Schools. *Organize your group or service organization to volunteer for one of our quarterly Stuff the Bus food drives at Saar’s Super Saver Foods. *Follow us on LinkedIn and share our posts with your network. Contact Jenny McCoy at 206-717-4709 or at [email protected]