Champale Anderson is quite a mom in her St. Louis home. She has to be, considering she has six children to tend to as their mother. But other children sure appreciate her too.
For the past 5 years, several children have flocked to her back yard to receive bag lunches and dinners, and the 48-year-old Champale is more than happy to serve up those meals for them.
Says Champale: “Sometimes kids get a bag and come back to my house around 7 p.m. because that may be the only meal they have during the day. They ask for another bag and I say, ‘Of course.’”
About five years ago, the children of Champale’s friends starting coming over to her house, saying they were hungry. She would also see them begging for money outside a nearby gas station… money that they would use to buy food. The neighborhood she lived in was poverty-sticken. There was also heavy drug use. So the mother of six just knew she had to do something.
Her house is right next to the school bus stop, so it was the perfect place for her to help children. When she has enough money, she will buy turkey and ham for sandwiches and serve them up to the children, instead of bologna. But the kids seem to like peanut butter and jelly the most.
She started a GoFundMe campaign to raise $1,500 to help with the food costs. But it has since raised more than $66,000. Champale works with a home healthcare company and she would rush home just after noon to supply several children with what would probably be their first meals of the day.
Says Champale: “Those kids are waiting on me. I have to be out there because they are so excited. They don’t know what’s going to be in the bags so they get off the bus and take off running. I tell them, ‘No, we don’t need an emergency room visit tonight,’ and they laugh. I love them.”
And we’re pretty sure the feeling is mutual.
