What Goodies Are in Kids Kupboard?
Contributed by Melissa Rigas, MatSu Food Bank
Founded in February of 2016 by Lynette Ortolano, KIDS KUPBOARD has always had children at the heart of their operation. They have been preparing and providing fresh and nutritious meals to kids identified as food insecure for almost 10 years. Their mission is to realize the full potential of Alaska’s youth by ending child hunger. How, you may ask? With sustainable, grassroots, CHILD-CENTERED strategies and by advocating for these strategies throughout Alaska.
In August of 2023, Milena Sevigny was chosen for the role of Executive Director, when Ms. Ortolano retired. Her passion for and the importance she places on growing food in general comes from the farming environment she grew up in, in Texas. She has seen many other places in both the United States and abroad and naturally, the food systems that exist in those places.
Milena has been in Alaska for 10 years, all of that time in our Valley. She began volunteering at Kids Kupboard in 2017 and was clearly devoted to its cause. She even donated hundreds of pounds of fresh produce from her own home garden! As she says herself so well, feeding kids with fresh, healthy food speaks to her soul (Frontiersman,November 2023). Until that time, Kids Kupboard had focused on getting a lot of children fed in real time and they were successful.
Milena expressed to me that this mission will certainly continue and that she is excited to be in the process of bringing it to the next phase: GROWING! Kids Kupboard has been in their new locale since 2021 - 43 acres of land was purchased with generous grant monies from the Mat Su Health Foundation and the Rasmuson Foundation.
Her vision includes using this land for every aspect of food growth and preparation for children’s meals. What is critical for her and Kids Kupboard is that children are a part of EVERY step. This is teaching kids self sufficiency, like we teach them to tie their shoes or learn their ABC’s. Considering the state we live in, it is truly a necessary skill that all our young folk should be comfortable with. As Alaskans, self sufficiency is part and parcel of our very beings.
Some of the other projects that she and Kids Kupboard envision are:
- Offer on-site Summer Farm Camps (slated for Summer 2025) and After-School Programs.
- Create a food forest that would favor growing fruits and berries.
- Use the trail system they have throughout the property to host sustainable foraging classes for kids as well as Native/indigenous plant opportunities.
This vision parallels that of the MATSU Food Bank in addition to many other organizations and farms in the Valley in that the need of increasing food SECURITY and SELF SUFFICIENCY in our great state is NOW.
At the end of our interview, Milena and I spoke about a project that she has embarked on with Kids Kupboard and is very near and dear to her heart - Seed Libraries. During COVID, Milena’s family invested in and established the Mat-Su Seed Library - times were rougher than they currently are and if we were threatened by a lack of food being able to make it up here, we needed to start with seeds. We cannot break down food any smaller!
When she took on the directorship, Kids Kupboard became the fiscal sponsor of the Seed Libraries. It is a magnificent project that is unique to them and it is a beginning for us all. There are currently 6 Seed Libraries in our Valley. They are located at Big Lake Library, Wandering Cafe in Wasilla, Talkeetna Library, Sutton Library, Trapper Creek Library and the latest one that went up at the end of March of this year is at the MATSU Food Bank. It is the largest one to date and the clients absolutely love it and are grateful to be able to get seeds and grow portions of their own food. They are also appreciative of the wide range of information supplied to them by the Matanuska Experimental Farm.
Interviewing and speaking with Milena was a joy and she gave me hope that when we all work together as a team, we become each other’s support systems so that no one falls through the food security cracks. And not just ‘food’, but healthy, nutritious, locally-grown and raised food.
The core of Kids Kupboard’s mission is to feed and teach our young how to grow our own food here. Their spacious property brings the potential to achieve steps towards this and ultimately, self sufficiency. After all, isn’t that what our next logical step should be? Collaborative partnerships are the name of the game and we are definitely on that road with Kids Kupboard and will stay on it until we can quite literally, feed ourselves.