Meet the Partner: ALIVE!

Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS) is fortunate to count dozens of dedicated businesses, community organizations and institutions of higher education as partners working with us each day to inspire students and address barriers to learning. 

The Meet the ACPS Partners feature aims to proudly thank our partner organizations. Through these question and answer style articles, ACPS also wants our school community to get to know who our partners are and the positive impact they have on our schools. Let us meet the partners:

ALIVE!

https://www.alive-inc.org/

Karl Bach, director of communications

Schools Served: Alexandria City High School (ACHS), Francis C. Hammond Middle School, George Washington Middle School, Jefferson-Houston PreK-8 IB School, Charles Barrett Elementary School, Cora Kelly School for Math, Science and Technology, Mount Vernon Community School, Naomi L. Brooks Elementary School and William Ramsay Elementary School.

What is your mission statement? How do you work with ACPS students, families or staff?

ALIVE!’s vision and mission are to alleviate the suffering caused by poverty and to dramatically improve the lives of those in need in the City of Alexandria. Through faith and love, ALIVE! helps people faced with emergency situations or long-term needs become capable of assuming self-reliant roles in the community.

ALIVE! distributes groceries to Alexandria residents at various locations around the city four times a month in addition to our Food Hubs in Del Ray and the West End. These pop-up events create access points for people who need food assistance to collect eggs, fresh bread, frozen meat, produce and other essential items.

There are four primary ways ALIVE! works with Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS). 

• We provide food for students at pantries.
• Work with Communities In Schools (CIS) to provide extra food at its school distributions.
• Work with volunteers and school staff to provide weekend bags of food that have enough food for three meals each day during the weekend.
• As needed, we provide food for families ahead of school breaks or when events happen that may close school in an emergency situation and we are asked to help. 

Every week, school social workers or Parent Teacher Association (PTA) volunteers pick up pre-packed bags of after school meals for students. These bags contain single serve items that students can prepare themselves for the weekend when there are no school provided lunches. Around 200 students per week have access to meals this way. This is a program we are hoping to expand to cover more ACPS locations and to ensure we are reaching more students at the locations we already serve.

How long has your organization been (officially/unofficially) partnering with ACPS?

ALIVE! has distributed groceries to Alexandria residents at a number of ACPS locations over the years. These pop-up events create access points for people who need food assistance to collect eggs, fresh bread, frozen meat, produce and other essential items. ALIVE! has partnered with ACPS to support students who need support with meals when vacations or unplanned school closures mean that they cannot get free meals at the schools. Furthermore, for the past four years, we have provided supplemental items and logistical support to food distribution events and on-site pantries run by ACPS and Communities In Schools social workers.

If you could describe the impact of your work with ACPS in three words or less, what would they be and why?

Alleviating food insecurity. ALIVE! provides supplemental nutritional support to students and their families. Our primary interactions with ACPS come in the form of nutritional support, both for students who need to feed themselves and to provide groceries for families that might need support.

What is recent good news about your organization or a feel-good story you can share about your work?

Roughly half the food that ALIVE! distributes come from donations. When ALIVE! receives something that is expired or damaged, we compost this material and use the soil for our produce garden at the Del Ray Food Hub. Local students work with master gardeners to care for this garden and the vegetables and herbs grown here go directly to our clients who visit the hub for essential groceries. We felt really good about being able to help provide bags of food when the schools needed it for Winter Break and during construction at Naomi L. Brooks Elementary School, as well as responding to increased needs at ACHS. 

What is one thing most people might not know about your organization's work?

Many people think of ALIVE! as the food bank for the City of Alexandria, but we also have programs that offer transitional shelter for women and their children, emergency financial assistance and programs that connect donated household items and furniture delivery to Alexandria families in need.

How can community members get involved and support your organization's collaborative efforts with ACPS?

We are always looking for donations of easy to prepare single serving portions of food for after school meal bags. Items in highest demand include:

• Cereal bowl packs single serve boxes.
• Boxes of oatmeal packets.
• Kid-friendly microwavable food cups (like macaroni and cheese or soups).
• Tuna and cracker snack packs.
• Goldfish crackers snack packs.

You can learn about how to donate items at: https://www.alive-inc.org/donate-items/