Volunteers ensure students have food for the weekend

For the past nine years, volunteers with a nonprofit organization called the 2Twenty Club have been assembling food packages for lower-income schoolchildren to take home for the weekend.

The volunteers – including many children – meet on the first Sunday of every month at the Korean Community Center on Little River Turnpike in Annandale.

The president and founder of the 2Twenty Club, Sook Moon, said the name refers to the requirement that members volunteer for two hours a month and donate $20 a month.

When she came to the U.S. from Korea, “every day was hard,” Moon said at the most recent food packaging event on Feb 1. “When life got much better, I wanted to find some way to give back.”

When she started the organization in 2017, there were just five members. 2Twenty now has 400 members and sends 600 food packets to 12 Title I schools every month.

Robert Hong, a member of the 2Twenty board, who brought his children to the event, said he joined the organization because he had been looking for a way to help the community where his whole family can participate.

While his sixth-grade son and second-grade daughter were filling bags with snacks, Hong said, “I want my children to share my values. It’s really rewarding.”

The 2Twenty Club distributes 50 food packages a month to each of these schools:  Annandale Terrace, Bailey’s, Bailey’s Upper, Braddock, Bren Marr Park, Woodburn, Lynbrook, Pine Spring, Forestdale, London Towne, and Hybla Valley elementary schools and Poe Middle School.

Each package contains two breakfasts, two lunches, two dinners, two snacks, and two drinks. At the Feb. 1 event, about 50 volunteers unloaded boxes of instant ramen, Beefaroni, apple juice, crackers, and much more. They spread out the items on a long table, while kids and their parents formed an assembly line to put them in bags.

2Twenty members drop off the bags at school libraries. The principal and counselor hand them out on Friday afternoons to children from homes likely to experience food insecurity.  

The donations from club members are used to purchase food, mostly from Costco and Amazon, Moon said. The club also raises money from an annual farmers’ market at Burke Lake Park every spring and a walk-a-thon in the fall. She said the club raised about $40,000 last year.