School of Education

School Counseling Student Meg Moody Creates Food Partnership Program to Help Students in Her Community

Meg Moody

When schools closed suddenly due to COVID-19, first year School Counseling student Meg Moody knew that the elementary school where she is PTA President needed help. The small school lacks Title I funds but has a significant Free-and-Reduced-Meal population. Meg was afraid those needs would be missed, so she worked with her school's administration team to start a food partnership program. She also advocated tirelessly those first two weeks to get the school division to set up a Grab-and-Go meal location in the mobile home community that is home to 50 of the school's students and was successful in those efforts! Those 50+ families who provided consent for assistance were then paired with a volunteer family that drops off a standard list of groceries to their doorstep every other week. In addition, Meg set up a PTA lock-box and fills it weekly with donated non-perishables to make sure that no student in the community goes hungry. In seeing these actions out, Meg had the opportunity to work with another GMU Counseling Department student, Jose Flores, in his position as the school's Student Information staffer. Jose was instrumental in translating materials and making phone calls to families.