Almost any student
can tell you it’s difficult to study on an empty stomach. Fueling the body is
essential to its overall functioning, after all. But what if you didn't have any snacks to help you study? What if you didn't have any food to eat at all? Hunger is a harsh reality for many children among us. The Backpack Program goes a long way to help the many students in the Charlotte and surrounding area, who rely on school
lunch as their primary diet. It's a bigger problem than you might think. In fact, Second Harvest provides food for more than 1,600 backpacks a week that go out to kids in a 15 county area. The
Backpack Programs hopes to combat that by providing students in need with
healthy snacks and food to last them until they come back to school on Monday.
Last week I had the opportunity to meet with
members of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School System Elementary Staff to discuss
the organization’s involvement with the Backpack Program. We know that if children don't have enough to eat over the weekend they likely will not have a shelf full of age appropriate books at home. So why not include one of our books in each of these backpacks? Not just one book, but a new book every week! It's like a happy meal toy! We believe that fueling the mind should go hand and hand with fueling the body.
This isn't our first crack at it. Last August, Promising Pages began a similar Backpack program with the Matthews Help Center and our books continue to be place into 60 backpacks that go out every single week. We also partnered with Second Harvest Food Bank and Carolinas Health Care System to put books in all 1,600 of those backpacks as part of our Feed the Body Feed the Mind Campaign.
This isn't our first crack at it. Last August, Promising Pages began a similar Backpack program with the Matthews Help Center and our books continue to be place into 60 backpacks that go out every single week. We also partnered with Second Harvest Food Bank and Carolinas Health Care System to put books in all 1,600 of those backpacks as part of our Feed the Body Feed the Mind Campaign.
Albemarle Road Elementary will be our pilot
school for our latest Backpack Program and with your help we plan to expand throughout Charlotte-Mecklenburg
in the future. You never know if that next book you give us will end up inside one for these very special backpacks.
-Carley Foster
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