Moscow churches team up to keep Idaho kids fed on weekends all summer

This story was first published by FāVS News on July 22, 2026.

MOSCOW, Idaho — In late 2012, Moscow’s League of Women Voters published a study of local poverty, which pointed to food insecurity for children as one of its most serious effects.

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St. Mark’s Episcopal Church took note, and in the summer of 2014 debuted what is now known as its Food for Kids initiative — a privately-funded complement to the Moscow School District’s weekday Summer Food Program. A year later, the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Palouse stepped in to partner with St. Mark’s, and the two houses of worship have maintained the effort ever since.

At present, Food for Kids distributes bags of food to over 200 local children from 11 a.m. until noon each Friday at Lena Whitmore Elementary School throughout the summer. The program is all-volunteer, and relies on individual donations and recurring fundraising efforts.

How the Food for Kids program works

“We basically try to give them enough food for the whole weekend,” said St. Mark’s parishioner Lois Clifton, who has been involved almost since the beginning and is the most senior volunteer currently with the team. “Canned pasta, canned chili, canned vegetables, chocolate milk, juice pouches, apple sauce cups, macaroni and cheese cups, instant oatmeal, pop tarts, snack foods, fruit snacks, granola bars.”

Mary Jo Hamilton organizes the UUCP side of Weekend Food for Kids. Volunteers purchase and pack food on Thursdays at the churches before taking them to Lena Whitmore on Fridays for distribution.

“I have a few friends around here that have good fruit trees, so I’m able to pick cherries or plums or something like that and give that to kids,” Hamilton added.

To receive the food, children need only to show up, and do not have to apply or register in any way.

Meeting the food program’s expenses

The program saw a fundraising bump of thousands of dollars early this year when longtime Moscow resident and Food for Kids volunteer Joanne Sutton made it her dying wish that others would contribute in her memory. Her family put out the word in her obituary, published in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News this January, that “in lieu of flowers and in honor of (Sutton’s) service to both students and the food bank,” donations should be made via checks payable to St. Mark’s with “Food for Kids” written along the bottom left line.

Two months later, the UUCP hosted a benefit concert for the charity starring the local band Gefilte Trout.

“We’re going to be doing this program for a long time,” Hamilton said. “Food prices have gone up so high, it’s amazing how much more we’re spending on food — but we do have people that give us money to buy food. As long as they’re willing to give us money to buy food, we’ll keep doing it.

“This is one of the more important things we could be doing for kids in the summer, and I know we have a lot of adults that are very, very grateful to get those bags of food.”

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