TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — As Steven Cota-Robles packed a box full of fettuccine Alfredo ingredients, it brought him back to when he was a kid facing food insecurity.
His mom, he said, would often complain that she had stomach aches, but in reality when he looks back, he said she was skipping out on meals so he could eat.
His favorite meal was tacos with meat and potatoes, his mom later revealing the potatoes supplemented the meat so they didn’t have to spend so much on meat.
“I didn’t realize until I was an adult,” Cota-Robles said.
Taking into consideration his own experiences, he founded The Tucson Family Food Project four years ago. They’re a non-profit organization that puts together free meal kits for students with ingredients to make a meal. Cota-Robles also makes an accompanying YouTube video so they know how to cook the meals.
“It’s using things that they have around them or that’s like fresh, seasonal produce,” he commented.
The project started in his kitchen back when he was feeding twenty kids. Now it’s grown to feeding over 200 kids every Friday. Their goal is to give them a meal so they can have one on weekends when schools don’t provide meals.
“When I first started it, my biggest thing that I thought about was the nutrition in the food like calories, protein, things like that,” Cota-Robles said.
Just last year he said they made over 9,500 meal kits for students that are in sixth through eighth grades.
“It turns on light switches for kids in their heads that when they make a recipe. They think 'if I can do that, what else can I do?'” Cota-Robles said. “That’s the goal, it's just to kind of get them outside of their comfort zones and thinking about 'how can I feed myself?'"
One meal usually feeds about four people, but he said meals like soup can feed up to eight. Every student can make one big meal every weekend.
“It instills them with this sense of confidence that they can go out and provide for themselves,” Cota-Robles said.
In 2023, Feeding America said there were over 40,000 kids in Pima County facing food insecurity.
“They learn to cook and then they help their families and they’ll help others as they grow and pass on what they know,” Mary Lu Breschears said.
She’s one of the 50 volunteers at the organization. The organization started out with five volunteers four years ago, and they’ve been growing ever since.
Breschears said she started volunteering three years ago and has seen the organization grow.
“People have a common desire to help,” she said about her fellow volunteers, saying they are now friends.
Cota-Robles is already in talks with the Tucson Unified School District to expand the program. The organization will be using spaces in the district to cook and make videos. By the end of the school year, he said the bigger space will enable them to feed about 500 kids a week.
Putting together a final box, shifting around pasta and Parmesan cheese, Cota-Robles thought back where he started, and how far he’s come.
“It’s surreal thinking where we are now to where we were when we started,” he said.
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Andrew Christiansen is a reporter for KGUN 9. Before joining the team, Andrew reported in Corpus Christi, Texas for KRIS6 News, Action 10 News and guest reported in Spanish for Telemundo Corpus Christi. Share your story ideas with Andrew by emailing andrew.christiansen@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook, or Twitter.
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