Give The Gift Of School Milk

There are so many things I don’t remember from elementary school (like, you know, the actual lessons I was supposed to be paying attention to), but a lot of the things I do remember involve food. I remember surveying the steaming trays of food as I stood on line to buy lunch. I remember the crinkle of the wrappers of the whoopie pies I would buy at lunch time (I often used all of my lunch money for dessert...I'm not sure why the cashier never busted me on that one). I remember my fascination with the fact that food could be used to make dyes for craft projects. And I remember the pegboard and bucket in kindergarten where you would flip your name tag around and drop a quarter if you were buying milk that day.

My family didn’t have a lot of money -- there were 7 kids! -- but somehow milk money was always there for me, which is why I'm having a lot of feels about the facts that: 1) today is School Milk Day, and 2) one of my favorite organizations -- Heifer International -- is doing something totally bad ass to help connect school kids with milk.

Heifer has been working since 2008 to help dairy farmers increase milk production, and just this summer, in collaboration with farmers, government agencies, and school districts, they brought things full circle via the Heifer School Milk Feeding Program. This past July, they kicked things off by onboarding 1,742 pupils in the Njombe region to receive fresh 200ml packets of pasteurized milk. These kids will continue to receive a free, daily packet of fresh milk every day Monday - Friday during the school year. Their goal is to reach 9,000 pupils. SO AWESOME.

Now, here’s how we can help. Obviously the best thing would be a direct donation. Any size donation would be amazing, but for reference, a donation of $75 can provide one student with fresh milk for a school year (that's just 40 cents a day). The next best thing would be for you to share this post like crazy! My team at Women Online (where I serve as creative director) is donating $1 (up to $2,000) for every retweet or Facebook share of this post!

Let's do this thing, people. We can create a lot of happy milk slurping opportunities together!

All images courtesy of Heifer International

Disclosure: This post reflects a compensated editorial partnership with Heifer International. All thoughts and opinions about my school-aged obsession with all things food are, of course, my own.