Through the Oregon Summer Food Service Program, free lunches are offered to all Oregon residents 18 and younger. In Washington County, Oregon’s second-most populous county behind Multnomah, free summer lunch sites include parks and community centers in addition to schools. For many children, free lunch sites also provide an opportunity to engage in facilitated activities – which many youths didn’t experience during the 2020-21 school year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the spring of 2021, Oregon State University Extension Service’s 4-H Youth Development Program in Washington County was invited to partner with Operation H.O.P.E. (Health, Outreach, Partner, Encourage), a community project largely supported through a partnership of the Oregon Volunteer Council and Intel Involved. Operation H.O.P.E.’s mission is to partner with local businesses and non-profit organizations to provide STEM Kit goody bags that are distributed at free lunch sites. Each kit includes a pencil, eraser, snack item, Band-Aids, hand-written card, and a STEM kit.
Alice Phillips, 4-H faculty member in Washington County, coordinated the assembly of STEM Kits that included an activity – Bee Buzzer – with instructions in English and Spanish and all necessary supplies in a sandwich-sized Ziploc bag. Phillips worked with a volunteer from Intel to organize a kit-building day at the Extension office in Beaverton. Five Extension employees, seven Intel volunteers and one teen volunteer assembled the kits.
As a result of this effort, 1,300 STEM Kits were created and donated by OSU Extension 4-H to Operation H.O.P.E. Phillips then volunteered at community sites over the summer to help distribute the STEM goody bags to youths.