2023 Outstanding Community Partner: Child Hunger Outreach Partners

The mission of Child Hunger Outreach Partners (CHOP) is to create an entire generation that doesn’t know hunger through innovative and collaborative outreach partnerships. 

CHOP began serving 45 middle school students in Towanda, PA after the founder’s daughter shared on her first day of middle school, that if students did not have lunch money, they simply didn’t eat. Since 2018, CHOP has grown to serve tens of thousands of students weekly in Pennsylvania.  

After meeting at several community events, CHOP began hosting events at MFHS offices in Scranton and Tunkhannock in 2022. Knowing that 60% of children in Lackawanna County are living with food insecurity, MFHS and CHOP realize we could do more to address this together. When the new MFHS Circle of Care office opened in 2023, we partnered with CHOP to provide and maintain a food pantry to better address food insecurity for our clients. Since the pantry opened in June 2023, MFHS and CHOP have served over 550 people, including 342 children. Over 400 prepacked weekend meal bags and over 800 snack packages for pregnant moms and children have been distributed through this new program. We thank Children’s Hunger Outreach Partners for assisting MFHS in our mission to meet the health and nutritional needs in families in Eastern Pennsylvania.