Kitchen on the Street, Inc

Roughly 600,000 Arizona children qualify for federally funded breakfast and lunch, due to their family’s income being below the poverty level! A child’s diet influences his or her mental function and abilities. Children who do not receive the necessary nutrients from their diet have a more difficult time reaching their academic potential and children who skip meals experience a decrease in cognitive performance. In 2006 Lisa Scarpinato and her husband Vince were looking for volunteer opportunities they could do with their 12-year-old daughter. They soon found that most nonprofits require volunteers to be 16 years or older. Their deep desire to serve others led them to take a hard look at their community. On 9/3/2006 during dinner with friends at their home, their lives were forever changed. That night a dinner guest shared a recent experience he witnessed at the school he worked at, wherein he watched a 2nd grade student search through the cafeteria trash for food! After investigating, he found that this student and her siblings were from a low-income family and struggled to get food on weekends, outside of school. After hearing this, Vince and Lisa started the process of forming a 501c3 nonprofit called Kitchen on the Street, for the express purposing of serving food insecure kids in AZ. Kitchen on the Street currently provides Bags of Hope (weekend food backpacks) to 2,000+ children throughout the Valley. Bags of Hope are distributed through schools and provide the nutrients necessary to properly fuel a child’s body and brain so they can be an academic success. Their research indicates that once a food insecure child receives a Bag of Hope on a regular basis, reading skills increase by 12% and math scores improve by 26%! In addition, the nonprofit hosts Family Food Pantries on school campuses and in response to COVID, has developed a FREE, confidential, online resource program to assist struggling families.