Norwood Food Program Feeds 400 Families Weekly

NORWOOD, MA — Norwood introduced a new community food program to the town. The program is serving over 400 families and has school cafeteria workers cooking, preparing and serving weekly dinners to families throughout the months of May and June.

The program, run through the Norwood Public Schools, was an idea that started with the members of Norwood’s Incident Command Team. The program provides free Grab & Go dinner meals to Norwood families with students in the Norwood Public Schools or home-school, or Norwood families of other schools with children under 18 years of age.

"Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the members of the Incident Command Team wanted to take a unique approach to addressing food insecurity within the community," said General Manager Mazzucco. "Unlike other programs that serve breakfast or lunch, this is a dinner program for the entire family. Not only did we want to provide food and resources for the children, but for their parents as well."

Families are encouraged to fill out a Google form to indicate their request for grab-and-go dinners. All meal requests should be submitted by 10 a.m. on Tuesdays through the months of May and June. The meals are available for pick up from any of the community's elementary schools on Wednesdays.

All meals are prepared and packaged “family-style” and are distributed cold, with heating and cooling instructions provided. Meals contain 8-10 servings, potentially lasting more than one day for a family. Anyone with food allergies should contact food services at enorris@norwood.k12.ma.us or call 781-352-2363 to discuss other options.

The Norwood Public Schools cafeteria staff has been instrumental in implementing the program by organizing, packaging and distributing the meals each week.

"We are excited to be part of a program uniquely designed to cater to whole families, instead of just individual students," said Superintendent Thomson. "Our cafeteria workers are dedicated to ensuring that families in need of meals receive one each Wednesday. We look forward to continuing to help our community during this time of need."

The Norwood Public Schools orders the food through its food vendors and approximately 5 cafeteria workers prepare the meals. An invoice is then sent to the town with a per cost meal that includes the labor and product and the initiative is being funded through the Norwood Fund.

The free program is operating in its sixth week and more families are signing up each week. Different meals are prepared for the families each week with usually at least two options to chose from.

This week, the town expects to serve more families with the choices of orange chicken with fried rice or vegetable stir-fry.

Click here to order meals through the program. All requests are kept confidential and are used for planning purposes only.