Bel Aire Elementary students pack meals – and encouragement – for residents in need

Bel Aire Elementary School fifth graders Hadley Defesche and Sydney Preuss prepare sunflower-seed butter and jelly sandwiches May 7 as part of the grade’s annual Community Service Project. Some 125 lunches and kindness cards were prepared for the San Rafael-based Ritter Center, a nonprofit that runs a pantry in addition to providing housing, behavioral health and healthcare services to county residents facing poverty and experiencing homelessness. (Francisco Martinez / The Ark)

Clients at San Rafael’s Ritter Center sometimes pull out a small card to show the staff — folded and unfolded many times, years after it arrived with a free lunch.

On May 7, Bel Aire Elementary School fifth graders prepared 125 lunches for the Ritter Center, each packed with one of those cards.

The lunches — sunflower-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, oranges, apples, granola bars and water bottles — were part of the grade’s annual, end-of-school-year Community Service Project. Parent volunteers and the Rotary Club of Tiburon-Belvedere provided support, including longtime member and Tiburon resident George Landau, 93, who helped make sandwiches alongside students.

The nonprofit Ritter Center provides housing, behavioral health and healthcare services to county residents facing poverty. Its pantry, now known as the Full Basket Community Market, serves up to 450 individuals a week and distributes up to 1,000 bags of groceries per week, according to Matt Kizer, the pantry’s manager and the center’s facility manager and volunteer coordinator.

The Bel Aire event is part of The Lunchmakers, a series of monthly school events where students prepare meals for people experiencing homelessness that has spread to schools across Marin and the San Francisco Bay Area.

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