Erase Meal Debt for International & Local Students

Hello! I am a parent of a student at International Community School, a Title I charter school in Dekalb County. This campaign will help pay off debt from unpaid meal balances at the school as well as many other needs that may come up as a result of food insecurity. With the sudden drop off of COVID-era nutrition funding for schools, ICS families feel the effects in many ways. This fund will help ensure the rising cost of meals does not stress families.

My goal is to raise enough funds to make a donation to the Beloved Community Fund that can cover our current school meal debt and relieve the stress that families may feel when they fall behind on making payments to cover school lunch fees.

ABOUT ICS

(Excerpted from the ICS website ): The International Community School (ICS) is a public charter school in DeKalb County, Georgia, serving students in grades K-5. ICS was strategically designed in 2002 to bring together refugee, immigrant, and local children in an academically challenging and nurturing environment. Today, the school serves more than 400 students annually, representing more than 30 nationalities and speaking 25 languages. Around half are refugees or immigrants, and nearly 70% are eligible for free or reduced lunch.

My take: ICS is a magical place where students learn to value diversity and live with compassion. They do an amazing job of embracing, welcoming, and serving whole families; making sure that parents have assistance completing forms, providing translation when needed, operating a clothes closet and a holiday toy market, etc. In short, ICS does everything in its power to make sure that all families in its reach have what they need. We can help them fill in the gap of student meal debt so that no child has to be treated differently.

EVERY DONATION HELPS!

No amount is too small to help fill this financial gap.

ICS is full of compassionate humans who work overtime to ensure every student is cared for. They have put in a massive effort to ensure students receive meals, but the existing debt, which accrued when COVID funding for free meals, suddenly stopped, needs to be addressed. The system is broken and doesn’t often work for families that need it the most. Many of these families are part of the ICS community.

Once the meal debt is cleared, any additional funds will go to ICS’s Beloved Community Fund, which helps bridge the gap between what the district allocates in funding and what it costs to deliver a quality education targeted to the needs of our refugee, immigrant, and local students. It also ensures the sustainability of the programs described above.

Let’s support these caring educators in making sure that every student, every family, every person in the ICS community is cared for and treated with dignity. Thank you for your support!