Student-run Grocery Store Accepts Good Deeds as Payment [Video]

• A student-run grocery store in Linda Tutt High School in North Texas has helped its students learn employment and other valuable life lessons firsthand.
• Instead of money, the store accepts payment in the form of good deeds.
• The store aims to do its part in keeping kids fed and lowering food insecurity in America.

The Linda Tutt High School in North Texas opened a grocery store that also helps its students learn valuable life lessons.

The student-run store, which provides food and essential items to other students, faculty, and families amid the pandemic, accepts payment in the form of good deeds instead of money.

“It’s not something that you see every day in a school building,” Principal Anthony Love told Fox 5 News. “I think a big part of it is about empowering our students, because many of them come from low socioeconomic families that need just a little extra support with food.”

The store was launched with the help of several local non-profits: Albertsons grocery store, First Refuge Ministries, and Texas Health Resources. The idea was pitched to the principal by First Refuge Ministries’ executive director, Paul Juarez, and the director of student intervention for Sanger Independent School District, Dr. Ann Hughes.

“They approached me about a grant that they wanted to apply for through Texas Health Resources, about possibly putting a grocery store inside a school,” Love told Fox 5.

The store aims to do its part in lowering food insecurity in the U.S. A report from NPR, which cites the United Nations World Food Program, states that the number of people struggling with food insecurity in the U.S. doubled from “135 million in 2019 to 265 million in 2020.”

Customers can pay with good deeds using a point system. More good deeds, as well as more family members in a household, increases the number of points they can use to purchase products.

The store operates from Monday to Wednesday for customers in the school district. On Fridays, the school partners with the BackPack program to help feed kids during the weekend.

Principal Love told Fox 5 that the partnership has helped them “provide additional food and supplies that the families may need.”

“I think the most exciting part of it is just teaching our kids job skills that they can carry with them as they graduate high school and move on into the world. Students are really the key piece to it,” he added.

Source: Tank’s Good News