School-based food pantry serves three South Bronx schools

At the Charles Drew Campus at East 170th Street and Third Avenue, many of the services students need to be healthy and productive — such as medical care, afterschool activities and counseling — are under one roof. But kids also need food — and many families in the Bronx struggle to get enough.

Enter the school-based food pantry, open three days a week, where families from I.S. 219 New Venture, Frederick Douglass Academy and Knowledge and Power Prep Academy can receive bundles of groceries to help them stretch their budgets. 

“Once families know about it, they come consistently,” said pantry coordinator Enuma Okolo.

The pantry is run by Children’s Aid in partnership with Food Bank for New York City, which has helped to establish more than 50 school-based pantries.

Recent state data shows that the Bronx county ranked highest in food insecurity — and that was a survey of only adults. Many who work to fight hunger in the South Bronx say that the community’s need for nutritious food has only increased since the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Families at the Charles Drew Campus are no exception. The campus has seen 21 new migrant families so far this year, pantry organizers said — and many non-migrant families are also struggling, staying doubled up with others or in temporary housing. 

Ronald Cope, a deputy director for Children’s Aid overseeing community schools in the South Bronx, said he is pushing for a pantry in every school.

He told the Bronx Times that during the pandemic, “The way we were connecting with families was through food.” In 2020, he and other staff distributed crates of free produce and weekly hot meals, thanks to special funding. 

But when that aid dried up, “That need wasn’t just gonna go away,” Cope said — so the pantry allows them to keep helping families who need it most. 

‘I get to engage with people’

The pantry employs a few students — three high-schoolers and one middle-schooler —…