A Jasper Public School Nutrition Director is to be recognized this Thursday for her work in coordinating over a quarter million meals for children in need.
As a part of the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance 2025 Hunger Action Month breakfast being held Thursday in Little Rock, Jasper School Child Nutrition Director, Tina Byrd will be recognized with the Alliance’s Acting Out Against Hunger Award. The award is given each year to individuals, businesses, and non-profits across the state to honor outstanding service to the Alliance and the six Feeding America Food Bank’s serving Arkansas.
Byrd began her career in the food services department of Jasper Schools in 1997 in her words by, “starting at the bottom” working in the kitchen. By 2016 she had become the director of the district but tells KTLO News that it’s a whole team at the school that made the winning of the award possible.
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Byrd has worked closely with the Food Bank of North Central Arkansas (FBNCA) including coordinating a school food pantry, hosting the Food Bank’s mobile food pantry, and coordinating summer meals for children at 13 meals sites across four counties. During the 2024-25 school year, the Jasper School food pantry distributed over 150,000 pounds of food (approximately 125,000 meals), and the summer meal program coordinated by Byrd provided an additional 164,000 meals to children.
Families, individuals and the elderly have benefited greatly from the partnership with the Food Bank with folks often getting in line hours before distribution times highlighting the continued need in Newton County.
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In addition to this direct service to individuals in need, Byrd serves on the Food Bank’s Member Agency Council and served as a panelist for their Childhood Hunger discussion this summer. Byrd says her teams passion to help those in need drives them to keep working and finding new ways to provide to the children and residents in need.
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Byrd will receive the award on Thursday morning along with other honorees including the Methodist Foundation for Arkansas who also received an award honoring the foundation’s contributions to ending hunger in Arkansas including a grant distributed in November of 2024 to the Food Bank of North Central Arkansas for the Food Bank’s Hunger Garden program. Thanks in part to this grant opportunity, the Food Bank estimates their annual harvest for 2025 to be approximately 30,000 pounds of food by the end of the growing season.
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