Some Cedar Rapids school officials are hoping the community will help the district's food-insecure families in the coming days.
In a post to Facebook, Sunday afternoon, the district's communication's director, Akwi Nji called for residents to donate to a last-minute food drive.
"Cedar Rapids community members are invited to donate non-perishable food items to several locations, chosen as pop-up sites to serve highest need populations," Nji said in the post. "But this is time-sensitive as there's no telling what the weather holds in the week of Jan 28-Feb 1."
Nji said each Friday, hundreds of district students take home a bag of food for the weekend through HACAP (Hawkeye Area Community Action Program), a nonprofit dedicated to helping low-income people across eastern Iowa. Those students had recently missed out on the service after classes were canceled, Friday.
"They rely on this community's resources," Nji said. "At one school alone, over 100 families did not receive this service because there was no school on Friday."
Nji said her hope was to get food to families as soon as possible and as close to the beginning of the week as the weather and school schedule would allow.
Starting Monday, Nji called for donors to drop-off items at any of the following locations during school hours or from 9am-3pm at Wellington Heights Neighborhood Assoc:
-Cleveland Elementary 2200 1st Ave NW
-Franklin Middle 300 20th St NE
-Kenwood Leadership Academy 3700 E Ave NE
-McKinley Middle 620 10th St SE-Metro High School 1212 7th St SE
-Nixon Elementary 200 Nixon Dr, Hiawatha
-Roosevelt CC Business Academy 300 13th St NW
-Wilson Middle 2301 J St SW
-Wright Elementary 1524 Hollywood Blvd NE
-Wellington Heights Neighborhood Association 390 15th St SE