The DeKalb County School System is seeking donations of food and funds for another Back Pack program to make sure children who receive free or reduced priced meals at school have plenty to eat during the Spring Break while they are at home.
Dee Anna Persinger, School Health Coordinator, says through the”BackPack” program, children receive food they can take home.
“BackPack” was started locally as a pilot program during the winter break for students at Smithville Elementary, but Persinger says this “BackPack” program will include all schools if donations permit. “We started a food BackPack program this year with winter break and it was such a huge success that we would like to do that again for spring break. We are again looking for volunteers, monetary donations, and food donations. The program is not going to be successful unless we can find those volunteers and donations. Spring break starts March 29th and we are scrambling to get that together so if anyone is interested, we welcome them to help us.”
Persinger says almost 400 students from Smithville Elementary School were served during the winter break but in order to expand the program to serve students from all schools more donations of funds and food are needed along with volunteers to help bag, box, and label the food bags.
Suggested individually packaged food to donate for the BackPack program include: 100% juice in single serving unbreakable bottles, boxes, or pouches; small boxes or bags of nutritious cereals; nutritious snack/breakfast bars; fruit cups; small boxes of raisins or dried fruit; microwave popcorn; non-perishable single serve microwave kids meals; and individually packaged crackers (peanut butter and crackers), and packaged nuts.
For more information, call Dee Anna Persinger at 215-2118 or Cindy Childers at 215-2161
The BackPack Program concept was developed at the Arkansas Rice Depot, after a school nurse asked for help because hungry students were coming to her with stomachaches and dizziness. The local food bank began to provide the school children with groceries in non-descript backpacks to carry home.
In addition to providing nutritious food to school children in need, some BackPack Programs provide extra food for younger siblings at home and others operate during the summer months when children are out of school and have limited access to free or reduced-priced meals.
The BackPack Program became a pilot program in 1995. The National Council of Feeding America approved the BackPack Program as an official national program of the Network in July 2006.
More than 140 Feeding America members operated more than 3,600 BackPack Programs and served more than 190,000 children in FY2009.
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