Members In Action

When the Little Rock School District noticed student meal debt ballooning over a year and a half, it put out a call for community help in May. At more than $200,000, it was an amount never before seen by the district.

Donations started pouring in, including an $11.89 check from a great-grandmother who wished she could give more, says Stephanie Walker Hynes, the Arkansas district’s director of child nutrition. By August, donations totaling more than $50,000 – many of them from individual “angel” investors – had chiseled away at the debt, which had accrued at 13 of the district’s schools that did not qualify for federal free meals for all students.