HOOKENA — Hookena Elementary School students got a nice surprise Monday just in time for winter break. ADVERTISING HOOKENA — Hookena Elementary School students got a nice surprise Monday just in time for winter break. Nonprofit Auntie’s Angels made sure
HOOKENA — Hookena Elementary School students got a nice surprise Monday just in time for winter break.
Nonprofit Auntie’s Angels made sure keiki were sent home with paper bags filled with food, as well as two to three books, to hold them over during the winter break, which for the Department of Education’s public schools gets underway after school ends Wednesday. They also got to use tickets they collected for good attendance during the fall semester to buy goodies, gifts, food and personal necessities.
“People donated so much I doubled what is in the bags,” Jan Benlein, Aunties’s Angels executive director, said of the community’s support via donations and grants. “We have double soups, double meats, double fruits, mac and cheese and more. They’re going home with a couple bags.”
For the past six years, Aunties’s Angels has worked with seniors at the low-income Hualalai Elderly housing complex in Kailua-Kona through monthly programs like the Soup Kitchen and Pantry. This year, said Benlein, the nonprofit’s board of directors voted to begin working with the 128 students at Hookena Elementary School, providing once-a-month brown bags filled with food and creating incentive programs.
“We wanted to increase attendance and bring the reading skills up so we started some programs, incentive programs,” Benlein said.
The incentive programs, in effect since school started back in August, include giving students tickets for each day they attend school that can be used to “buy” small gifts, food items, and personal necessities and throwing a pizza party for the top six readers in the school. The first pizza party was held last month and Benlein hopes to make it happen every three months.
The brown bag program will continue after the winter break through the end of the school year and she hopes to keep it going thereafter.
“We love the school, the students, the staff they are terrific we are building a bond with them,” Benlein said.
Want to help? Give Aunty Jan a call at 329-7897.
