With another school year getting underway, Inter-Faith Food Shuttle’s Child Hunger Programs team is hard at work coordinating with school administrators to ensure that all students come to class each day, well fed and ready to learn, play, and interact with their peers. This is no small task. According to Feeding America, one in six children in North Carolina is food insecure. In the Food Shuttle’s seven-county service area in the central part of the state, that number translates to 65,310 children facing hunger on a daily basis (Feeding America, July 2022). During the school year, free and reduced-price breakfasts and lunches help address the issue of hunger for a large population of children. The Food Shuttle’s Child Hunger programs focus on filling in the gaps for children’s nutritional needs on weekends and at home through efforts such as BackPack Buddies and School Choice Pantries. Schools are currently in the process of registering for these programs that can make such a difference in the lives of students and their families.
BackPack Buddies is one of the Food Shuttle’s best-known efforts in hunger relief. BackPack Buddies is based on the national Feeding America model. Through partnerships with local schools, we help to alleviate child hunger by providing children in need with nutritious and kid-friendly food at times when other resources are not available, such as weekends and school vacations. Last school year, BackPack Buddies were distributed to 73 sites in all seven counties that the Food Shuttle serves (Wake, Durham, Orange, Chatham, Nash, Edgecombe, and Johnston). Over the course of the school year, a total of 72,766 bags were distributed to children through school administration staff. The children served through the program are identified as “chronically hungry” by the school administrators, and their identities remain unknown to Food Shuttle staff. This year, the number of schools and students served promised to increase substantially.
School Choice Pantries tackles child hunger by providing a readily accessible source of food assistance to children and their families on the grounds of schools, or other convenient, familiar, and safe locations. This year, the goal is to focus more on providing choice in the selection of available products and in expanding into all seven of the Food Shuttle’s service area counties.
New this year for school administrators who participate in our Child Hunger Programs, the Food Shuttle is organizing a School Site Coordinator Council. This opportunity is for social workers and counselors, educational center and after-school program coordinators to meet at least once every two months to provide a safe space to share ideas and feedback and to strengthen and maintain our partnerships. Interest in the Council has been strong.
Additionally, the Child Hunger Programs team will be piloting a gift card program through which school pantries and the families they serve will be able to stock up on healthy snacks. The program will be carefully monitored, and there has been much interest expressed among site coordinators.
The goal for the Child Hunger Programs team as we head into the new school year is to be intentional in all they do—to ensure the dignity of the neighbors they serve in all their programming. The Food Shuttle’s Child Hunger Programs are growing and fine tuning, in service of all the people involved. It’s going to be a great school year!