RockStarFinance.com is such a great website run by J. Money and Nate St. Pierre. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the terrific Directory of Personal Finance Blogs they created.
Well now they are doing even something better and more beneficial to our communities.
They've started a program called the Rockstar Community Fund, and specifically the #GivingCards project.
The idea behind the program is for people to pool together their money and use it to do good in their communities. Specifically they give away five $20 Visa gift cards every month to people to use to do good in their own communities.
Well I loved the idea and immediately thought about the snack pack program at the middle school, which I've written about here before. This is the school where I sub the most and I have seen the need there first hand.
I explained on the application that this area is a poor rural community where over half of the students are on government assistance due to low incomes.
Oftentimes these students leave school on Friday and don't have another hot meal until they return to school on Monday. Some of them have no one to cook a meal for them.
The snack pack program helps to fill a void in their lives by sending them home with a bag of food so they will have something to eat over the weekend.
The most requested item for the program is canned pasta and canned soup because this is something easy for a middle school aged student to fix for him or herself.
One of the problems with the program is that it is severely underfunded. There are over 100 students on the program and even with donations, there is often not enough food to meet the needs of the students.
Because of that, I decided to apply for one of the $20 Visa cards from the Rockstar Community Fund to buy some food for these student. The application for the snack pack program was approved and I received the $20 Visa card earlier this month.
Well you know me. I did my research and found the best deal I could to use this money wisely. I knew that the cheapest place to find canned pasta would be at Walmart.
Now I know some of you don't care for Walmart, but I was looking to buy as many cans of pasta that I could for this $20.00.
Lucky for us, my daughter even found some coupons for Spaghettios. The coupons were 40¢ off for two cans. So on Saturday, my daughter and I went to Walmart and picked up 26 cans of Spaghettios with meatballs. The pasta was 98¢ per can, but with the coupon would be 71¢, which was cheaper than the 80¢ cans of Chef Boyardee.
Here is a photo of the bags of Spaghettios. It was dark this morning when I took the picture.
I'm so thrilled and grateful to the people at Rockstar Finance who created such a beautiful program to help people help in their own communities. I am grateful that they decided to help me help the students in my community with childhood hunger.
And since we are not supposed to take pictures of students and post them on the Internet, I posted some photos of the school hallway this morning before they arrived.
I was early enough to catch the custodian cleaning the office inside. :)
And here is a photo of the classroom I worked in today before the students arrived.
I want to send a big thank you to Nate St Pierre, J. Money, and the Rockstar Community for donating the money to help alleviate childhood hunger. We could do not this without people like you helping with programs like this.
Thank you!
Belinda
~ Living within our Means ~
How wonderful that you took the time to apply for the gift and shop for the best deal! You have a good heart Belinda.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Susan. I couldn't have done it without the Rockstar Community. I give them all the thanks. :)
DeleteThat is so fantastic, Belinda! I agree, there are times when we can set aside what ever issues that we have with particular stores when it means we can do more good, in the long run. You and Bailey did a terrific job.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much, Lili. :)
DeleteWe used to participate in a similar program at our old church. Here is is called Backpack Buddies. In the town where we lived, the schools partnered with the churches and each Friday food was slipped into certain backpacks by the church ladies. We had a certain school that we were in charge of, and a certain lady who was the liaison. She collected items from the church members (and/or money to buy items) and we all took turns helping her pack the bags. The school staff took care of filling the actual backpacks as they had a way to do it discreetly. Other churches took care of the other schools, as there were several in town. We helped a few times. It was great.
ReplyDeleteOh, that is so sweet Becky. I love to read about stories like this.
DeleteSounds like a great program and leave it to Bailey to sniff out coupons. What a gal!!
ReplyDeleteI bet you probably got the most for that $20 gift card, but every little bit helps when it comes to hunger.
That is just so terrible that these children go hungry all weekend. I find it so hard to accept that this is happening in our country.
Good job Bailey and Belinda. It's too bad you can't get some stores to donate canned goods to this program or do they already?
Several of the churches in our area already donate to the snack pack program. There is just so much need though.
DeleteWe do not have enough grocery stores here to help with the program. In fact the one grocery store here is owned by people in the next town over and the food that is donated here is given to the food bank in that other town, which serves as an important reminder to be aware of where your donation is actually going.
Thank you so much for your kind words and comments. They mean a lot to me, Mary Lou. I hope you have a great day! :)
This is so awesome!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Busy Bee. :)
DeleteRockstar rocks! I was part of the holiday giving effort, and hope to be involved again. Giving away money (or gift cards) is just fun.
ReplyDeleteYes, it is, Donna. I love Rockstar Finance. :)
Delete