Porter Medley has been spending his Friday mornings packing snack bags for quite some time.
The New Generations Chair of the Carolina Forest Sunrise Rotary Club has been a Rotarian since 2009, and he is a key contributor to the club’s involvement in the Conway Medical Center Foundation’s “Smart Snacks” program, which provides healthy weekend snacks for elementary school students across Horry County.
Medley helps lead a group of volunteers on Friday mornings, sometimes before the sun even rises, to pack bags full of snacks for students who qualify for the federal subsidized lunch program. These snacks, which include granola bars, fruit cups, pretzels and crackers, are sent home with students to be eaten on Saturdays and Sundays.
“In total [the program] serves about 900 children,” Medley described. “Every year, the Conway Medical Center Foundation puts about $40,000 or $50,000 dollars into it, purchasing the food. For us, our club provides the muscle.”
The Carolina Forest Sunrise Rotary Club is one of several organizations that assists Conway Medical Center in the project. The Smart Snacks program was started as a partnership between the CMC and Horry County Schools to combat the issue of inadequate nutrition for the county’s school-age population.
For many years now, Medley and the rotary club have stepped up to provide the helping hands.
“This past Friday, we packed about 290 bags,” Medley said, describing the process. “It starts with a couple of us showing up in the morning at the Conway Medical Center private dining room. A couple of us get there at about 6:30 a.m. We set up a long table and we take the food that the Conway Medical Center Foundation has bought, and we break it down onto the tables.
“We line up on both sides of the table and we put two of each item into the bags. As they get down to the end of the line, those bags are tied and then put into a plastic container. Then we stack them up, load them up and get ready to deliver them once the packing is complete.”
The club partners with high school and college rotary programs, joining forces with younger volunteers to help the process flow smoothly. The Smart Snacks program serves four elementary schools: Waccamaw Elementary, Conway Elementary, Homewood Elementary and Midland Elementary.
“Every Friday when we pack these meals early in the morning, we have members of the [high school] and [college] clubs together,” Medley said. “And usually, it’s an even number of each of us. There’s generally anywhere from 13 to 20 people packing. When we work together, we can usually do about 290 meals in 10 minutes.”
Medley says he remembers back to his youth and the value of nutrition, one of the driving forces for his involvement in the program for over a decade.
“In my family, we had five children,” he described. “My mom and dad always made sure that we all ate breakfast whether we wanted it or not. And we didn’t come from a well-to-do family. So, feeding five children was quite a chore. But, they recognized how important it was. And I went to school feeling better, ready to take on those challenges.”
Medley hopes that other members of the community will support the program by donating to the Conway Medical Center Foundation and supporting the two groups’ efforts that center around nutrition for the county’s youth.
More information on the Smart Snacks program can be found at cmcfoundationsc.com.
“Donate to the Conway Medical Center foundation,” Medley said. “It costs them $50,000 a year to do this. This is not a one-and-done program. We do this together every Friday of the academic year, except when there are holidays that preclude us from doing it. They have been doing this since March of 2005 and our club has been together with them, providing bodies to help do this.”