Food deliveries, community support, & incoming video...

With Covid continuing to affect our community and especially our schools, Millwood Impact continues to follow our mission by figuring out ways to care for the youth and families of the Millwood and West Valley community.

I was sitting in my office when a friend of mine named Chris drove up, popped open the back door of his vehicle and said, “Do you want some backpacks to give out?” He had been given a couple hundred backpacks from Walmart and knew that Millwood Impact could help distribute them to families in need. I took around 100 of them and have been in communication with all elementary & kindergarten school principals and counselors to find out the need and drop them off at the schools.

Since we still can’t have our after-school programs, Millwood Impact has continued our Wednesday food distribution summer program where approximately 120 families show up to get boxes of food (dried, fresh, and dairy) from 2nd Harvest. We now have our “regulars” that we have seen each week for many months. The volunteers and I have heard from many families about how much of a gift this has been and continues to be. We have had people give homemade goods, handmade bracelets and personally sewn face-masks to us in appreciation. We aren’t sure how far into winter we will continue this, but we know the need is there so we are planning to do it as long as 2nd Harvest continues to provide the food.

Bite2Go, also with 2nd Harvest, is a weekend food program for students all over Spokane. Millwood Impact helped West Valley schools in the Spring and even received a grant from The Innovia Foundation so we could continue this during the summer. With Covid keeping West Valley students out of school, the need for weekend food bags is still a need, and possibly even bigger during this pandemic. Once again, because we don’t have our after-school programs running and because The Rayce Rudeen Foundation has provided our great 12-passenger van, we have taken over Bite2Go deliveries for four different schools and around 100 families. This is just another way Millwood Impact is able to live out our mission and vision.

For two weeks before the schools were able to provide a space, we had a family of 7 in our community center doing virtual school every morning from 8:30am - 12:30pm because they didn’t have WIFI at home. Two elementary, two middle, and three high school students came each morning, followed the Covid requirements, put on their headphones we provided and logged into their classes to do school! This is yet another way we have heard the needs from the schools and used our resources to come alongside and show support.

Lastly, I am so excited to share that Kyle Johnson from Ink The Story has been working on a video with Millwood Impact. This video will provide a very clear message about who we are, what we are doing, and where we want to go. Please be looking for this video sometime over the next month.