Simplified: A $15,000 in-kind donation from Amazon to the Sioux Falls Education Foundation will provide bags of snacks and take-home meals for 400 students Friday afternoon. Here's how it all came together.

Why it matters

  • The donations are from the local Amazon distribution center. Local Area Manager Lisa Trapp applied and received a grant from Amazon to give back to local schools by providing meal kits with non-perishable food items and recipes for how to turn them into meals to feed a family.
  • Nearly half of Sioux Falls School District students are eligible for free or reduced lunches, which is determined by household income. And at the two schools where meals will be distributed Friday afternoon, those percentages are much higher – about 60% at Marcella LeBeau Elementary and 100% at Horace Mann Elementary.
  • Friday's donation is the third time Amazon has partnered with the Sioux Falls Education Foundation for a giveaway at local schools. Last year, they distributed school supplies and winter gear to kids at George McGovern Middle School.
"We know we need to take care of our students' basic needs, so when they arrive at school they are focused, engaged and ready to learn," said Allison Struck, executive director of the Sioux Falls Education Foundation, a nonprofit that supports students and teachers in the Sioux Falls School District.

Tell me more

For Trapp, the opportunity to address food insecurity with her employer's help is a natural fit. Before working for Amazon, Trapp attended culinary school, and she leaned on her own experience – including one of her own family recipes – to come up with meal ideas that would be easy to create with non-perishable items.

  • Once she had the ideas, she leveraged AI to create step-by-step directions to include in the meal kits.
  • Then, she and her team assembled the 400 kits to ensure each kid gets one bag of snacks, one bag with meal kits and some blankets, hats and gloves, if needed.

The bags will then be delivered and distributed Friday afternoon at both Horace Mann and Marcella LeBeau Elementary Schools. Trapp said the whole project demonstrates how Amazon is using its skills in distribution and technology to give back.

"We're delivering packages, yes," she said," but we also want to help the community."