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Bountiful Backpack program provides food to students in need
CLIFTON PARK >> Seeing an elementary school student with a full backpack slung over their shoulder running for the bus at Friday’s dismissal is a normal sight in today’s America.
But what if that backpack held something more essential than homework assignments and books? What if that backpack held food?
A volunteer-based program in the Shenendehowa School District is doing just that. This year the program hopes to send 160 backpacks home each week through the Bountiful Backpack program.
Based in Clifton Park and with students coming from some of Saratoga County’s best performing towns, getting enough to eat on weekends is the furthest thing from most students’ minds.
But Shen has more than 1,000 students getting free lunches each school day in grades K-8. For some, the schools’ cafeterias may provide the healthiest meals they get each day. Weekends can be two days of low protein intake and small portions.
To counter that situation volunteers at several Shen elementary schools took it upon themselves nearly three years ago to start sending food home with a few of the kids. Now, the Bountiful Backpack program is taking off.
“It started at one location but served two schools,” said volunteer Beth Miles. “In mid-2013 volunteers at Arongen Elementary (School) and Shatekon Elementary started raising funds for a weekend food program. The money initially came from Karen’s Kids, an independent fund that helps children and is based at Arongen. They put together 15 backpacks. It was kind of a PTA thing.”
Other volunteers and a few administrators heard of the program and that winter volunteers at Orenda Elementary School started working on fundraising. The first of 30 Bountiful Backpacks went out the door from Orenda a few weeks into the 2014-2015 school year. This year the school is planning on sending 40 backpacks out each week.
Miles is the mother of a Shen student who volunteers in a lot of Orenda’s activities. She said she started discussing the idea with other volunteers after speaking with an elementary school teacher.
“I saw a young student take some of her school breakfast and put it in her desk one day,” Miles said. “When I mentioned it to the teacher she already knew about it. She told me the student was saving it for dinner, that there was a need. I was amazed that something that is such a necessity like food can have that kind impact to make a young student save a breakfast. I couldn’t believe that in an affluent district like Shen there was that need.”
After a discussion with Orenda Principal Mike Smith on how to establish a weekend food program it was decided the volunteers would reach out to the Regional Food Bank of Northeast New York. They have a program dedicated to children and they were supplying the ShatekonArongen program.
Originally, Miles said, the nascent program raised funds with very little advertising, talking it up among teachers and counselors and quietly seeking grants and corporate support. As word of the volunteers’ work spread, Shen Superintendent L. Oliver Robinson reached out to the district’s principals, administrators and counselors. The result was to find ways to make the program better known in hopes that more backpacks can be sent home.
“It costs $183 per child per school year to pay for a backpack of food to go home each week,” Miles said.
“That’s $6.80 per week per child. We’re going to offer the program in the middle school’s this year for the first time. We’re shooting for 160 backpacks this fall from the middle schools and all the elementary schools.”
Each backpack comes with two breakfast items three entrées, a loaf of bread, two juice boxes, fresh seasonal fruit, two snacks, and a gift card for a gallon of milk every other week. There are special items also that the volunteers stuff into the packs on their own.
“We add additional food items because we know sometimes there are multiple kids in the families,” Miles said. “On holidays or vacation weeks some groups add things like toothbrushes and small tubes of toothpaste.”
Betsy Dickson is the Director of Children’s Programs with the Regional Food Bank of Northeast New York.
“We call it the Backpack Program,” she said. “We’re into our 10th year. We work with 69 school districts, 133 schools in 20 counties. The program feeds 3,668 kids a week.”
Dickson said originally, the schools had a choice between doing 15 or 30 backpacks only. But the regulation is becoming more flexible.
Initially the food from the Food Bank was picked up on Wednesday by volunteers from each Shen school from the Food Bank site in Latham and brought to the schools. The backpacks were filled at each school but storage was becoming a problem as the program grew.
This school year the district will send a single vehicle to pick up all the food from the Food Bank and store it in a room at the middle school. All the backpacks will be stuffed there. The program also has become an official Life Skills program within the district’s curriculum and will have high school students assisting.
“We have a core group of six amazing women at Orenda and now that it’s expanding I’m sure we’ll get more dedicated volunteers,” Miles said. “People are so generous when they know it’s for a good cause.”
Beth Miles is the contact person for the Bountiful Backpack program at Shen. She can be reached via email at: bethm. miles@gmail.com.