WIMAUMA, Fla. — A program that started in just eight Hillsborough County Schools is now helping provide millions of meals to families across the county.
The Feeding Minds School Pantry Program is a collaboration between Feeding Tampa Bay, Hillsborough County Homeless and Community services, the Children’s Board of Hillsborough County, and Hillsborough County Schools. It provides free groceries to families at participating schools, making food easier to access.
The program began as a pilot in 2018. Feeding Tampa Bay now operates about 90 school pantries across the Tampa Bay area. Since the program began, the pantries have provided more than 5.7 million meals in Hillsborough County.
At Wimauma Elementary School, Principal Karen Fletcher said she has watched the need — and the pantry — grow over the years.
“When we began partnering up, we saw changes happen with our families as far as coming out, and the number has increased and it continues to grow,” Fletcher said.
Fletcher said making sure students and their families have enough to eat can also make a difference inside the classroom.
She points to improvements at Wimauma Elementary, which has gone from a “D” school grade to just points away from earning a “B.” While Fletcher said a lot of hard work has gone into that progress, she believes helping families with food is part of it.
“We know that if students are not fed, they come in and sit in class hungry. That directly impacts them being able to focus,” Fletcher said.
The Wimauma Elementary pantry has been operating for nine years.
Patricia Fleurijean has been there since the beginning and said it has come a long way.
“We started out in a closet, we had some canned goods and some other stuff when we first started. We have advanced to this big room and we have a variety our families can choose, and to me, it helps them a lot more now,” Fleurijean said.
Born and raised in Wimauma, Fleurijean said she knows how important the resource is for families in the community, including many who do not have reliable transportation.
“A lot of our families are migrant families,” Fleurijean said. “They come up to pick up food and half of them walk. They carry the food back home because they don’t have transportation, so we try to help them out as much as we can.”
That accessibility is part of the idea behind the program. Unlike traditional food pantries that may require families to travel to another location, Feeding Minds pantries are located at schools families are already visiting.
Fletcher said the pantry is not only serving students’ families. Some teachers have also turned to it when they need help.
“I remember as a child I’ve had the same need with a big family, and so being able to give that love back in the community, that really warms our heart here,” Fletcher said.
During the 2025-26 school year, the Hillsborough County partnership served nearly 75,000 people from more than 21,000 households and distributed more than 811,000 pounds of food at participating schools.