Lunch Bunch

Erin Gardner and Kelvin Chin
Bay Area Youth Agency Consortium AmeriCorps Members

One aspect of the mission of the Chinatown Beacon Center is to strengthen community by unleashing the power of youth. To this end, Lunch Bunch attempts to ease any transitional anxiety that might exist for 5th graders moving on to middle school. During their lunch period, Participants (Lunch Bunch) are involved in team-building exercises and games in which they learn and discuss valuable information about the upcoming transitions. In addition, all fifth graders are taken on a field trip to Francisco Middle School, in order to give them concrete experience of what middle school is like.
Each year, the AmeriCorps members at the Chinatown Beacon Center deliver the Lunch Bunch program to all of the 5th grade students at both Jean Parker and John Yehall Chin Elementary Schools. For the past years, the Lunch Bunch program has evolved and grown with each new AmeriCorps pair and the program’s increased involvement is the District 3 Youth Development Network.

This year the 5th graders were split into groups of ten students to fifteen students each group met twice a week for twelve sessions until all 5th graders had the opportunity to complete the program. Each session lasted for 30 minutes and began at 12:15p.m. and 1:15p.m. at Jean Parker and John Yehall Chin Elementary school respectively.

Frequently Asked Questions
What are some of your program’s challenges and successes?

One of the main challenges of the Lunch Bunch program is fitting all of the information into 30 minute sessions. Another challenge is convincing the kids that they should attend Lunch Bunch instead of going to recess. (And then telling them about middle school, where there IS no recess!)