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Program
helps feed kids during summer
April 8, 2009
Suzanne Havala Hobbs
Weekends
and holidays aren’t times most of us worry about going
hungry. In fact, most of us don’t worry about being
hungry at all.
So it may surprise you to learn that more than a half million
schoolchildren in North Carolina are at risk of not having
enough to eat.
They leave school on Friday afternoon and may not get another
meal until their next school lunch on Monday. Longer school
breaks and holidays can be an even greater challenge.
And hunger is costly.
Children who are chronically hungry are more likely to do
poorly in school and have a harder time catching up. Kids
who don’t have adequate diets are also more likely to
suffer physical and mental health consequences.
That’s why food banks – and their supporters –
in our state are excited about a creative solution to give
kids wholesome foods when they’re not in school. It’s
called the BackPack Program.
Here’s how it works:
With donations from businesses, foundations, community groups
and individuals, food banks buy nutritious, non-perishable
foods such as canned baked beans, single-serving boxes of
cereal, fruit bowls, granola bars, canned vegetables, soup
and pudding cups.
During the week, volunteers fill backpacks with the foods
and deliver them to schools and other sites where needy children
pick them up before going home at the end of the week. Kids
return the empty packs the following week so they can be refilled.
The backpacks are making a difference for thousands of children
all over our state.
The Second Harvest Foodbank of Metrolina, for example, is
sending backpacks to 42 sites throughout ten counties in North
Carolina and South Carolina in the Charlotte area. The program
serves mostly elementary-age children, according to executive
director Kay Carter.
The Metrolina program, in existence for two and a half years,
is growing, and Carter hopes to have more than 50 programs
in place by the time school starts again next fall.
Nobody wants to think about anybody being hungry, but especially
not children,” Carter said.
Carter hears from school principals, teachers, social workers
and even the children themselves – regularly.
“One teacher related to us that a child in her school
was concerned because school was going to be out for a holiday,”
Carter said. “The little girl wanted the teacher to
help her figure out how far it was from her house to the school.
The girl knew the bus wasn’t coming on Friday because
of the holiday, and she wanted to make plans to walk to school
that day to get her backpack.”
The school sent the food home with the child on Thursday instead.
In another instance, a bus driver told Carter about a little
boy who had gotten chicken noodle soup in his backpack. The
boy didn’t know what it was, but he liked it a lot.
“He was telling the bus driver about the food,”
said Carter. “He described it as “this juice stuff
with noodles.”
Now volunteers go out of their way to add chicken noodle soup
to the boy’s backpack when it’s available.
More information about the program can be found online at
https://www.secondharvestcharlotte.org/Programs/Backpack-Program.cfm.
The Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina operates
a backpack program, too. It started serving 30 children in
2005 and now serves 850 children in ten counties: Wake, Durham,
Orange, Johnston, Brunswick, Franklin, Moore, New Hanover,
Pender and Scotland counties.
Bayer CropScience has been the primary donor to the program
since 2006, but the food bank would gladly accept additional
support. A list of most-needed items can be found online at
http://www.foodbanknc.org/programs/backpack/bp_mostneeded.pdf.
Organizations interested in starting a backpack program can
contact J. Caprice Brown of the Food Bank of Central and Eastern
North Carolina, at 919-865-3037.
Suzanne
Havala Hobbs is a licensed, registered dietitian and clinical
associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and
Management and the Department of Nutrition in the UNC Gillings
School of Global Public Health. Send questions and comments
to suzanne@onthetable.net.
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