Fueled By Kids

Fueled By Kids is an organization committed to ending childhood food insecurity. Working closely with the Manchester public schools and social workers, Fueled By Kids provides students, most of whom qualify for free breakfast and lunch under the National School Lunch Program, with food over the weekend. There are 67 hours between when these students receive lunch on Friday afternoon and when they receive breakfast on Monday morning. The unfortunate reality for many of these students is that they do not have a guaranteed source of food during these 67 hours. We provide them with bags on Friday afternoons when they leave school for the weekend that contain enough food to replace the meals provided by the school during the week. 

Due to the generosity of local business owners who donate the building we use, the bags and electricity, etc, 100% of all donations we get go directly to buying food for the bags.  We buy the food so that the bags can be consistent, healthy, and kid-friendly items.

Fueled By Kids began in 2016 as a family operation, which helped 65 children, and has been consistently growing ever since; we now serve over 1100 children each week. My oldest cousin, Gracie, started the organization in her junior year of high school after being introduced to the prevalence of childhood food insecurity in Manchester during one of my brother's basketball games. She was talking to a woman who showed her pictures of a cat she had recently started fostering, and Gracie learned she was doing so because a family had lost their low income housing thus could no longer care for it. When Gracie asked her about the implications for the children, she told her that often children will go the weekend without food when their families are homeless, semi-homeless or food insecure. We began to pack bags as a family for 65 homeless and semi-homeless children at the Parker-Varney school, and Gracie would deliver the bags during her free period to assure these children would have something to eat over the weekend. Our project quickly expanded beyond the size of our garage, adding two more schools that year, we moved to New Horizons and Gracie began filling out the 501(c)(3) application and spreading awareness about the organization so that we could secure more funding. The following year, we moved into our very own donated building which is close to Bedford High School, making it easy for middle and high school students to walk to volunteer to pack bags after school. When Gracie left for college she left the majority of the responsibilities on to my other cousin, Hannah, who passed it on to my cousin Joe and then Kate. Now that Kate is also in college, it is my turn to take responsibility for Fueled By Kids.

We now serve over 1100 children each week during normal school time, serving 21 schools in Manchester.

Who We Are

Fueled By Kids is an organization committed to ending childhood food insecurity. Working closely with the the Manchester public schools and social workers, Fueled By Kids provides students, who qualify for free breakfast and lunch under the National School Lunch Program, with food over the weekend. There are 67 hours between when these students receive lunch on Friday afternoon and when they receive breakfast on Monday morning. The unfortunate reality for many of these students is that they do not have a guaranteed source of food during these 67 hours. We provide them with bags on Friday afternoons when they leave school for the weekend that contain enough food to replace the meals provided by the school during the week.

Fueled By Kids began in 2016 as a family operation, which helped 65 children, and has been consistently growing ever since; we now serve 400 children each week (600 for the duration of Covid-19). My oldest sister, Gracie, started the organization in her junior year of high school after being introduced to the prevalence of childhood food insecurity in Manchester during one of my basketball games. She was talking to a women who showed her pictures of a cat she had recently started fostering, and Gracie learned she was doing so because a family had lost their low income housing thus could no longer care for it. When Gracie asked her about the implications for the children, she told her that often children will go the weekend without food when their families are homeless, semi-homeless or food insecure. We began to pack bags as a family for 65 homeless and semi-homeless children at the Parker-Varney school, and Gracie would deliver the bags during her free period to assure these children would have something to eat over the weekend. Our project quickly expanded beyond the size of our garage, adding two more schools that year, we moved to New Horizons and Gracie began filling out thee 501(c)(3) application and spreading awareness about the organization so that we could secure more funding...