A frequent volunteer activity for our Saint John Neumann Key Club is Brighter Bites. Brighter Bites takes place at Grace Place and is a nonprofit organization committed to providing fresh food to families in need. They aspire to create a community of long-term health with the goal of changing behavior among children and their families in order to prevent obesity. Generous volunteers pack fresh produce for families to pick up and take home each week. Receiving families and teachers get two bags, containing 50 servings (25lbs), of a variety of fruits and vegetables. Almost all of the produce that is packed and distributed is donated. Brighter Bites’ mission is to purposefully channel all of the produce donated by kind individuals into low-access communities. 

Recently, two seniors involved in SJN Key Club, Mariella DeSimone and Audrey Muller, headed over to Grace Place after school to help pack and distribute fresh produce to local families in need. Audrey informed me that for the first hour they were responsible for packing fresh vegetables, including but not limited to, carrots, cucumbers, peppers, lettuce, and collard greens. She then went on to tell me that once they finish packing alongside many other volunteers, they put a few bags out for parents to grab when they pick up their children from school. They also walked up to each car in the carline and offered families fresh vegetables.

Brighter Bites was founded in 2012, and since then, they have graciously been able to provide more than 16 million pounds of produce and hundreds of thousands of nutrition education materials to more than 40,000 families and teachers around the country including Houston, Dallas, Austin, New York City, the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area, and Southwest Florida. Key Club members greatly enjoy being involved with this amazing organization and are looking forward to continuing to help as many families as possible in the future.