Ali Khawari knows that when kids come to school with hungry tummies, their focus is not on learning.
“Kids come to school hungry for a kaleidoscope of reasons,” says the executive director of Halton Food For Thought, the region’s sole provider of student nutrition programs. “It’s not just always food insecurity or lack of money.”
With the help of 1,600 volunteers, Halton Food For Thought offers programming to about 97,000 students in the region. That includes breakfast, lunch and snack programs.
“For me, personally, I love the fact that it’s universally-accessible and that it’s stigma-free,” Khawari says.
In the past, the organization did not have a wait list of schools that wanted to access its services, but that has now changed.
“We never had wait lists,” Khawari says “But now for us to be able to be sustainably providing funding for those schools … we have to make sure we have sustainable funds available for those programs to run, without impacting our current programs.”
Khawari says 1 in 3 children in Halton come from a food insecure home. Halton Food For Thought works to meet those needs, while dealing with challenges such food prices that have risen 40-45% in the last five years. As of early 2025, provincial funding for the program had not increased in more than 15 years.
The organization started when parents in schools noticed that some children did not have enough nutritious food in their lunch boxes. The program has now been a registered charity for more than 30 years.
For Khawari, the benefits of the student nutrition program go beyond simply food. It provides an opportunity for students to gather, sit down, and socialize with peers in a stigma-free environment.
“It is really not about food then,” she says. “It’s about building community.”
