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| Food Bank in a BackpackThe Food Connection began providing backpacks filled with two days worth of food to students at Tacoma’s McCarver Elementary Schools on January 4, 2008. The backpack program represents a new and innovative way of providing families with food resources to meet the basic nutritional needs of children. | 
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Kid-Friendly Meals Counselors at McCarver identify those students most at risk of hunger. The Food Connection delivers backpacks filled with six kid-friendly meals to the schools for pick-up every Friday during the school year. The students return the backpacks to the school each Monday so they can be filled for the following weekend. About 95 percent of McCarver’s students qualify for free or reduced meals at school. The Food Connection’s goal is to serve 50 McCarver students each week, and to expand the program to other local schools in the coming months. | |||||
Ending Weekend Hunger We learned from the Saturday mobile food bank in Lakewood’s Springbrook neighborhood how many of these children are at risk of hunger over the weekend. A teacher at Tyee Park Elementary, which many Springbrook children attend, told us that she noticed an immediate difference when the mobile food bank began, because her students did not come to school hungry on Monday morning. Hungry children suffer from health problems such as unwanted weight loss, fatigue, headaches, and frequent colds. They are more likely to be ill and absent from school and typically cannot concentrate or do as well as others when they are at school. |
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How to Help The Food Connection is partnering with local schools and organizations to collect appropriate foods. Please contact Kevin Glackin-Coley for more information: e-mail keving@foodconnection.org or call (253) 383-5048, ext. 102 or (253) 312-9392 (cell). | |||||
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