The BackPack Program provides children at risk of hunger with a weekly backpack full of nutritious, kid-friendly, shelf-stable food to get them through the weekend, when school meals are not available. Teachers and counselors identify eligible children. On Fridays (or the school week's end), backpacks are stocked with food and discreetly distributed to the children at schools or after-school programs.
Thanks to funding from the Hylite Corporation, American Idol Gives Back, Bath Presbyterian Church, the employees of Augusta National, Georgia SNAP and individuals, students in ten Georgia counties are receiving BackPacks during the 2008-09 school year. The counties include Burke, Columbia, Greene, Hancock, Jefferson, Jenkins, McDuffie, Putnam, Richmond and Screven. BackPack is running in schools where the rate of students eligible for free and reduced lunch averages more than 50%. The BackPack Program:
- Ensures that children at risk of hunger will have enough to eat during weekends and school breaks;
- Currently feeds 1,260 students a week ;
- Along with Children's Harvest, helps to teach the kids to break the cycle of dependence on emergency food sources.
We are working on expansion of the BackPack Program into South Carolina for the next school year. We urgently need your help to maintain AND expand this program!
Just $4 provides one student with a BackPack for the weekend; $128 will assure one student of receiving weekly BackPacks for a whole school year!
For more information about the BackPack Program and how you can help, contact Agency Relations Manager, Shiron Johnson at 706-736-1199 x223, or sjohnson@goldenharvest.org .