Starting in the 2026-27 school year, Team OC will implement a new food pantry program at Springs Valley and Paoli to provide students with access to healthy foods at home. This program has already started in the Orleans schools.
The program began with a suggestion from Youth First.
“Kacie Shipman, who is the Youth First Worker from Spring Valley approached us with the idea of helping support a food closet for students in connection with our Teen Chef program,” said Team OC Director Priscilla Woodrum. “We of course loved the idea and brought in Kate Jones from Orleans who is also our Teen Chef sponsor and Katie Cook from Paoli who is our partner with Teen Chefs and then brought into the conversation all three food pantries that support Orange County to have a discussion of how we could make this work together to make sure no child goes hungry and that in schools they had a resource for food.”
In 2024, Team OC received funding from the Orange County Health Department to increase food security. Once the program is implemented at Paoli, the school food pantries will include easy meal bags with recipes and instructions for preparing the food. Team OC plans to build new food pantries at one of their events as a good-deed project. The pantries will be built in the lead-up to the 2026-27 school year.
Other community partners are working to make the project a reality.
“SICHC supported the project with support at our Girls and Boys Empowerment Event, where, for a good deed, we built and delivered over 300 more (meal) bags to the schools. Continued funding comes from donors, and with that, we will build that into the good deed projects we do with the community,” said Woodrum.
Woodrum has the goal of the community coming together to help others.
“It truly takes all of us coming together to make a difference- and this is what community looks like,” said Woodrum.
Once the project is implemented in the fall, students can contact Kacie Shipman, a Youth First worker at Springs Valley, Katie Cook, Teen Chef sponsor at Paoli, and Kate Jones, also a Teen Chef sponsor to get access to resources they need.
Team OC is a youth mentoring program in Orange County that helps children and students who could use a caring adult or need help overall. They are located at 262 W. Court Street, Paoli, IN, 47454. Team OC can be contacted at [email protected]