Mended Little Hearts Making Food Bags for Heart Families

Mended Little Hearts of Charlottesville’s main purpose is to really focus on inpatient families at UVa. I have met very few families who live locally, most of the families we meet are from several hours away. The past couple of months we have been leaving food at the hospital and trying to figure out which foods are easiest to get there, store, pass out and which foods work best for the families. UVa peds Heart Center has been a great help in getting the food to the families as needed and in deciding which foods to put in the food bags. Thank you so much for all you do to help us out!!

We have recently decided that we will be focusing on getting food to our families who are in need, especially those who’s children are staying long term or who live farther away and are struggling the most. I was able to get enough food to make 24 food bags with some easy to make microwaveable food, snacks and some feel good treats that will last for a few days. Ideally it would be nice to be able to make 40 bags a month with double the food in each bag to ensure that all Heart families could get at least 1 good sized food bag a week as well as give out food vouchers to the hospital cafeteria. In order to do that we need to increase our fundraising efforts.

I bet you remember the CHD Awareness Week Event and Fundraiser we had in February 🙂 That was our first fundraiser and biggest event we ever hosted. We managed to bring in just over $2000.00! Which was our goal 🙂 That was also before our recent decision to do our best to provide some food to our families to help relieve some of the stress that comes from living in the hospital or Ronald McDonald House so far from home while caring  for and sitting next to the bed of Heart Child.

It looks like our new fundraising goal for the year is now up to at least $10,000 to provide the type of support we are hoping for.

Now that we have decided exactly what we want to do, we are in the process of picking out some foods, seeing which ones to keep on our monthly list, which ones to change out for something new. For now we are not leaving anything that needs to be in the fridge.

So far we have some tuna salad, almonds, micro mac & cheese, fruit cups, sweet treats, oatmeal, pudding, breakfast bars, crackers, raisins and fruit chews. If you have any thoughts or ideas on the food choice, I would love to hear it!

And of course, if you would like to help us out by donating to Mended Little Hearts of Charlottesville, you can visit our website to learn more about how you can do that.