Backpack Food Program For Schools
Backpack food programs provide nutritious non perishable easy to prepare food to children to ensure they get enough food on weekends and holidays to avoid hunger when they can t depend on school meals.
Backpack food program for schools. The concept is simple. Every backpack food program is unique to the community and school it serves. Twenty two million children receive free or reduced price meals through the national school lunch program and the national school breakfast program. Food finders supports the backpack program at 78 sites in 16 counties.
What is a backpack food program. These bags are often distributed at school to participating children in plastic or reusable bags by their teacher as they leave friday or before a long break. Feed more s backpack program provides children who don t have enough to eat with nutritious easy to prepare food at times when other resources are not available. Generally backpack food programs provide a bag of nonperishable food to children in need that they can take home and eat when school meal programs are unavailable.
The backpack program is currently serving more than 2 300 children. Children at risk of weekend hunger receive a bag of food that is child friendly nutritious nonperishable and easy to eat. What happens when they go home over the weekend. For more than 15 years the feeding america backpack program has been helping children get the nutritious and easy to prepare food they need to get enough to eat on the weekends.
Partnering with local schools backpacks are distributed every friday so that children have meals for the weekend. For many of these children school meals may be the only meals they eat. Just 7 each week provides healthy food for a child in need or 252 to feed a child for an entire year. Backpack programs provide kids with whole grains fruits vegetables and micronutrients needed for proper growth and development.
By providing kids with the nutrients they need when they re away from school they show up on monday morning healthy and ready to learn.