Woman gives child a free meal, loses her job

yinka ogunlami

December 24, 2015 11:18 PM

A kind-hearted woman, Dalene Bowden of Pocatello, Idaho who serves lunch at the Pocatello/Chubbuck school district was fired from her job for giving out a free meal to a hungry 12 year old girl who couldn’t afford to pay for lunch.

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A kind-hearted woman, Dalene Bowden of Pocatello, Idaho who serves lunch at the Pocatello/Chubbuck school district was fired from her job for giving out a free meal to a hungry 12 year old girl who couldn’t afford to pay for lunch.

She told the Idaho statesman: “I know I screwed up, but what are you supposed to do when the kid tells you that they’re hungry and don’t have any money.”

Bowden who is also a breast cancer survivor admitted that she had gotten a previous warning about her generosity when she gave a kid a free cookie. She offered to pay for it, but got rebuffed.

The termination letter she posted on Facebook says she was fired for ‘theft stealing’ the school’s property.

A ‘GoFundMe’ account (which has now raised a thousand dollars) was created so she could raise enough money to hire a lawyer to get the laws changed about schools being able to fire workers for giving out free meals.

Raushelle Guzman from Pocatello who has two children in the school thinks that the cafeteria worker did the right thing. She started an online petition to get the school to reinstate Bowden’s job and so far, it has recorded over 38,000 signatures.

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