The warehouse located at 2121 Brady Lake Rd. in Kent is small but has a huge impact.

The Ben Curtis Family Foundation volunteers gather at the warehouse every month to pack Birdie Bags for the surrounding schools in Summit and Portage County. The foundation packs 6,200 bags a month for 15 districts, according to co-founder and executive director Candace Curtis.

Birdie Bags started back in 2013 when Curtis first learned about food insecurity, particularly in children.

Around 15% of children in Portage County are food insecure, according to a report by the Akron-Canton Regional Food Bank. There are other schools within the counties that are growing at a faster rate. Cuyahoga Falls had a rise of 42%, Curtis said.

An increase in child hunger has caused the reduced lunch system to grow exponentially. According to the Curtis Foundation website, over 78% of children in the Barberton school district are on a reduced lunch. This number has recently increased to 82%, Curtis said.

During Curtis’s mother-in-law’s time on Kent City School’s lunch staff, she said she’d seen around 43% to 44% of the children on a reduced lunch.

With so many children on a reduced lunch, it is assumed by the schools that they may not have the best access to food at home. They are then sent home with a Birdie Bag.

“Parents are having to choose between paying bills and putting food on the table. No one needs to be hungry; it’s such a basic need,” Curtis said.

With child hunger continuously growing, the foundations’ food supply has to grow as well. The Curtis Foundation gets the majority of its food from the Akron-Canton Regional Food Bank and buys the rest with donation money from partnering organizations and businesses like The Arby’s Foundation, Off The Wagon and Kent State’s Golden Flashes Club.

The funds, however, have only been going so far with food. The same goes for the Akron-Canton Regional Food Bank contributions.

“We’ve been seeing all the cuts, but now we’re starting to feel the effects of it,” Curtis said.

Looking at the back room of the warehouse that is used for food storage, Curtis said most space in the room would be taken by pallets of food stacked high; it is now sparse with as few as 10-15 pallets of food.

Though food donations have slowed, Curtis is looking into other options to maintain a constant supply of food.

“I’ve tried to source food. It’s hard; we have to commit to a huge quantity of food at once, and it’s a lot. It is on my list of things to start doing soon.”

While on the hunt for food, Curtis never has to worry about finding help to package it all; within the warehouse, dozens of volunteers create an assembly line around totes of food, all moving bags along as they stuff ready-to-eat items in the bags, such as noodles, Chex Mix, Cheez-Its and more. Each bag is then tied and thrown into a Birdie Bag bin to be dropped off at its designated school.

On the morning of Oct. 15, Curtis was sure the bagging process would only take the volunteers an hour or two to complete the order, especially with the extra help from Southeast High School that day.

Just like the high school students, anyone can volunteer or donate to the cause via the Ben Curtis Family Foundation website. To become a volunteer, you create an account and sign up for any event that you’d like to participate in.

Zion Williams is a reporter. Contact her at [email protected].