When Dreams and Hard Work Come to Fruition
-As Featured in Vista Teen Outreach (VTO) Spring 2018 Newsletter-
VTO’s dream and hard work has come to life.
Back in the summer of 2016, VTO president, Debbie Medrano, had an idea of providing holiday food baskets for families within Vista Unified School District that struggle with hunger on a regular basis. We started to brainstorm, strategize and plan what would eventually turn into VTO providing 100 food baskets, including including a turkey with all the traditional sides, pumpkin pie and extra food for breakfast and lunches, for the holiday week the student would be away from the school pantries.
We had no idea if we could pull off this feat having never done it before, figuring out how to get the recipients, coordinating the funding and the logistics of shopping, packing and distribution. Generous corporate contributors, countless planning hours and a whole slew of volunteers helped to bring our dream to fruition.
Fast forward to 2017, we not only wanted to do the holiday food baskets again, we wanted to serve more families. We fundraised and organizations held food drives. With the help of our community and generous sponsors, we were able to provide food for 188 families, nearly doubling the number of families from the year before. This is not counting the families that didn’t have cooking facilities that we provided restaurant gift cards for. All in all, we made sure that close to 1,100 people were going to have a holiday meal at Thanksgiving. This was made possible from the generous funding from Datron World Communications. Other contributors were TJ Crossman and various other community donations.
One Vista Family’s Story
It was brought to our attention of a particular client who VTO is serving. This family consists of a single mother living in a car with her three sons. It is these types of situations that VTO is hoping to help and serve. This is occurring in our own backyard and if we can help just a little that may make all the difference in the world for these four people.
Your Support Matters
It is only with the continuous support of our donors and community that we are able to continue to fight to end hunger in our schools. This week marks the opening of the Back-to-School pantries at the VUSD schools we serve. We will also once again collect applications for holiday gift baskets and work with the community to fill these baskets.
If you would like to get involved with Vista Teen Outreach, please contact us.
Click here to donate to Vista Teen Outreach.
