Working for No Kid Hungry in Maryland, I spend much of my summer visiting free summer meals sites around the state. Today I visited a few in Baltimore, including Engine 27, a firehouse in the Belair-Edison neighborhood.
It's a low-income neighborhood; one firefighter told me that Belair-Edison has become one of the worst in the city for shootings and overdoses. After 7 pm, he said, they're going out on calls all night long. But there are plenty of children who live here.
This is the second summer that firehouses in the city of Baltimore have served meals to neighborhood kids in need, and it's the first year for Engine 27. I went on a tour with the kids and saw the fire engine, the uniforms and watched someone come down the fire pole (they still do that!). The kids asked great questions: How hot are the uniforms are in summer? Where they keep the hoses? What do firefighters eat?
During the time the free meals are served each day, Dominique, a firefighter from another station, comes to stay with the kids in case Engine 27 gets a call and the team has to leave. After lunch, she got down on the ground and drew pictures of fire engines and firehouses with the kids, when I captured this picture.
Seeing this warmed my heart and I wanted to share it, because it shows that hope, love and innocence still exist despite the struggles that children - here in Belair-Edison and across the US - face today.
