Friday was the perfect day for a donation—it was Field Day at Marshall Road Elementary! 🏆 The outdoor blacktop buzzed with music, games, and joyful kids celebrating the end of the school year—a true slice of Americana. Inside, social worker Krista Davidson led us to the school’s food pantry, tucked into a closet and shared with their PTA. Since our last donation in 2022, the number of students participating in the Free and Reduced Lunch has risen from 22% to 33%. A majority of the pantry’s funding depends on grants, which unfortunately may not be secured for the next school year. This week's Rustic Love grant helps bridge the summer gap by providing gift cards for pantry families and ensures support is ready when school resumes in August. We’re proud to support this amazing school pantry - thanks to donors like you who generously support our mission. ❤️🤍 (fb)

Schools in Fairfax County are not built to provide space for food pantries. Most often, pantries are situated in spare office closets or halves of closets in random hallways within schools. 🏫 Staff are not hired to create, nurture and manage food pantries. School social workers, family liaisons, teachers and volunteers manage pantries in their "spare" time to help fill the gaps in basic needs of the children they work with every day. 👩‍👧‍👦 Pantry fundraising is not part of the job description for any school employee. 💸 Yet in numerous schools throughout Fairfax County – ranked as one of the wealthiest counties in the country – many (and sometimes the majority) of students qualify for the Free and Reduced Lunch Program. Their school-provided meals are sometimes the only meals they eat during the week. Rustic Love's fundraising 💟 supports these school pantries - with the vital, simple goal of helping feed children in our community. Last year, we gave a grant to Woodlawn Elementary School to help start a food pantry for their most needy students. The school's wonderful Family Liaison, Julie Bueno, ✨ runs the pantry out of a tiny, crowded closet in her office. Woodlawn is a Title I school with 69% of students relying on free and reduced lunch. The number of students accessing the pantry has only grown in the last six months. Today, we were proud to once again support Woodlawn’s pantry with a financial grant to help ensure students have what they need to learn and grow. 🍏+📘=😀 Thank you for continuing to support our mission so that we can help children at local schools like Woodlawn. 💛 (fb)