(NewsNation) — A group of students in St. Petersburg, Florida, is helping other students with food insecurities in need through a local nonprofit organization.
Gina Wilkins founded the nonprofit The Kind Mouse in hopes of feeding hungry students.
“Just in Pinellas County alone, there’s 36,000 children with food insecurities, and 7,000 of them are chronically hungry, which means they don’t get food outside of school whatsoever,” Wilkins explained.
Wilkins said they’re provided for families through many agencies in town like after-school programs. But they’re also a part of the Pack A Snack Program through the Pinellas County School Boards.
“The school assigns us just numbers of children — it’s all confidential who we’re feeding. We really don’t know who we’re feeding, we just get the data. And we guarantee the full year, that their school year they’re fed, and then we carry it through the summer,” she explained.
Volunteers for the program are other students who range from ages 5 to 18 to help fill up bags with non-perishable food.
“They run their own board meeting starting at 5; they’re called mice in training. Then, they graduate to mice interns at age 12. And then they go on to Mouse Vision, which is their own video production company that they run by themselves, but they’re winning awards and getting scholarships through this program,” Wilkins explained.