By “What’s going on, Brooke?” Dianna and Wade Thomas asked their first-grade daughter when they noticed the money in her school lunch account was vanishing quickly.
“Some of my friends don’t have enough food money,” the little girl told her parents. So sweet Brooke let them use her account to buy snacks.
How heartbreaking! Dianna thought. How can we help them?
The Dade City, Florida, parents did some research and discovered that most students at Brooke’s school came from low-income homes. They qualified for free or reduced lunch but weren’t able to buy extra snacks—where Brooke stepped in. “Will those children have enough to eat when they go home for the weekends?” Dianna and Wade asked each other. “Maybe we can help.”
Before long, the Thomas family met with other local friends and brainstormed ways to support students facing food insecurity during weekends. Inspired, they launched The Thomas Promise Foundation (TheThomasPromise.org), which provides bags of weekend food every Friday for low-income schoolchildren in Pasco County.
At first, the Zephyrhills-based foundation served one elementary school. The next year, they added a few more. The charity’s reach kept growing, and today, The Thomas Promise serves 34 elementary and middle schools, along with a few high schools.
Each week during the school year, Thomas Promise volunteers deliver about 1,500 bags of food filled with nonperishable items like fruit cups, canned vegetables, pasta, peanut butter, cereal and oatmeal.
On Fridays, kids go to assigned spots to pick up their grocery bags. For families with a child younger than school age, an extra bag goes home with the sibling.
At the start of holiday breaks, kids receive additional bags to help them get through the time away from school. Parents can also visit the Thomas Promise central food pantry in an emergency over a break.
During the summer months, Thomas Promise partners with an Elks Lodge to provide even more meals.
“These food bags are a godsend to kids,” says Leortha Lloyd, a social worker at West Zephyrhills Elementary School, which receives about 160 bags a week. “We know for sure that The Thomas Promise meal bags make a difference.”
For the Thomas family, it’s an honor and a privilege to help others in need.
Dianna recalls a holiday event where she met the mother of one of the children in need who had been receiving bags. The extra food freed up money so the woman could take her child to a festival, which she otherwise couldn’t afford.
“I really want to thank you,” the single mother told Dianna. “Now I’m able to go and do something with my child!”
“How crazy that it’s grown from something so small,” says Brooke, who now works with her mother at their childcare centers. “How amazing is the community we live in!”
