By Scott D. Johnston

Nine members of Ocean Shores Girl Scouts Troop 41006 packed 448 free lunches Friday morning, July 7, at the Copalis Beach home of Green Lantern Lunches, the all-volunteer, non-profit program that feeds hundreds of children of low income families on the North Coast.

Troop Leader Desire Shores said some of the Troop’s members are receiving lunches from the program. The suggestion that the girls volunteer one morning was enthusiastically embraced. The program’s founder, Phyllis Shaughnessy, thanked the girls for their help, which took about two hours.

She noted that about 25 volunteers have prepared and distributed 5,735 lunches in the first three weeks, with no distribution on July 4th. The Friday menu typically includes a few extra items for the weekend, and some basic ingredients for a family meal are also offered.

The summer program will continue through September 1, when they expect to have delivered more than 20,000 lunches. The grass-roots effort did 10,006 in 2015, the program’s first summer. Last summer they delivered 16,919 lunches.

When kids go back to school the first week of September, the Lantern Lunch effort will switch to weekend family food packs. They distributed around 900 of those in the 2015-16 school year, and mushroomed to 8,200 this year.

Anyone interested in the program can contact Shaughnessy at 360-289-2971 or by email at tcels@coastaccess.com. The program has a website, www.greenlanternlunches.org, a Facebook page, and a Gofundme account at www.gofundme.com/rurallunchprogram/donate.