DJ and Monica Kipling didn’t expect to return to the Blackfeet Reservation in northern Montana. The couple was living in Missoula. They started a family; DJ got a degree in sociology; Monica raised their daughters.
But Monica started to miss their tribal home in northern Montana. She missed the culture. She wanted her daughters, Bree’Anna and Brih’Leigh, to experience sun dancing, sweat lodges and feel connected to the mountains that rise up dramatically at the edge of town. She wanted them to grow up proud to be Blackfeet.
So DJ and Monica brought their family back home. But finding work took time. Thankfully, there were federal nutrition programs there to sustain them.
Eventually, DJ found a job as a case manager at the local child support office. The family lives in a small house in a public housing complex. The girls have their own rooms, but one sleeps on an air mattress. DJ and Monica are saving up to buy her a real bed.
They try to be honest with their daughters about their situation. It’s not desperate, but it can be hard to make ends meet.
“We try our best to communicate with our kids,” DJ explains. “We try to help them understand, you know, why we have to say no to things sometimes.”
Monica has taught her daughters to live frugally. “When we’re going to the store and they say, ‘Mom can I get this? Can I get that?’ and I tell them, ‘Well, is it a necessity, or is it just for luxury?’ They know,” she said.
“If it wasn’t for SNAP during the times we were unemployed,” DJ recalls, “I don’t know how we would have survived. When we came back, finding work was tough.”
No Kid Hungry worked with their local school to make breakfast a part of the school day. It means that one thing the family doesn’t have to worry about is food for the girls. DJ and Monica know that when the girls get to school, they’ll eat a healthy breakfast at school.
And during the summer, a mobile meals truck supported by No Kid Hungry pulls into the driveway at their housing complex with food for all the kids that live there.
Food programs like these are critical to families that teeter on the edge of poverty. The slightest emergency can send their budgets into a tailspin. By ensuring that school breakfast and summer meals programs are effectively and efficiently feeding kids in communities across America, No Kid Hungry helps kids get the food they need to learn and grow.
Watch the short video featuring DJ and Monica:
