The College National Finals Rodeo has teamed up with the Wyoming Food for Thought Project to fight childhood hunger in Natrona County.

Starting this Tuesday, June 11th, you can join in the fight to end childhood hunter by bringing non-perishable food items to the Casper Events Center box office.

The Casper Events Center and the CNFR will give you a $2 discount off your General Admission ticket when you make a donation of food or funds to Wyoming Food for Thought Project.

The donations collected next week, will go toward the weekend food bag program, where kids get 6 meals to help them eat over the weekend when they can't eat at summer feeding sites or at school.

Consider making it a friendly competition with friends or co-workers to see who can raise the most food or funds, then bring it all to the Casper Events Center box office.

To find out more about the local effort to end childhood hunger contact Wyomingfoodforthought@gmail.com or call (307) 337-1703.

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The Natrona County Food For Thought Project

The Natrona County Food for Thought Project launched in March 2012 and is working on combating child hunger in Natrona County. Before this, we operated as Totes of Hope which is a weekend food program that launched in Natrona County in March 2011. During our pilot program in spring 2011, our project was feeding about 100 children and teens a week. The project runs two programs to help the children in our community:

  • Weekend food bag program.
    • The goal of this program is to bridge the gap from Friday to Monday when the school food program is unavailable.  A bag of food is sent home with identified students on Friday afternoon.
    • The program currently serves over 200 students per week in almost every school in our district.   We are continually accepting new students into the program.  Participating children are identified by self-referral or by staff at their schools. There is no application to participate; if a child is hungry, we give him food.
    • These bags contain a mix of easily cooked meals, such as spaghetti, and ready-to-eat items, such as boxes of granola bars and instant oatmeal. The packs are designed to feed a student, or to provide a supplement for an entire family's weekend meals, when necessary.
    • It costs $5 a week to feed a child or $300 per year.
    • Volunteers pack and deliver the food to the participating schools and students.
  • Middle and High School Food Pantries
    • The weekend food program format doesn’t work for some of our older students who many be out on their own, might have obstacles to accessing other local food pantries, or any other various reasons that occur for these students.  The food pantries’ goal will be to serve this population.  We are currently looking for a contact at the local middle and high schools that might be willing to help set-up or host these pantries.

Our program is a partnership between the Casper Area Education Foundation (CAEF), the Natrona County School District(NCSD), and the Wyoming Food for Thought Project (WFFTP).  All donations are received by CAEF which is a 501(c)3 charities.  This means that all donations are tax-deductible.  All administrative support is furnished by NCSD at no cost to the program. This means that 100% of all donations received are used to buy food for the project.

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