Backpack Buddy Club                                               Schools interested in the Backpack Buddy Club program click here 

Fact Sheet
Backpack Buddy

Program Overview
Many children who rely on free or reduced-priced lunches during the school year go home to meager or no meals on weekends. The Houston Food Bank’s Backpack Buddy Club works to fill that gap.

On Fridays at participating schools, children take home backpacks filled with food that is child-friendly, nonperishable, easily consumed and vitamin fortified. The backpacks are given to the children discreetly, to avoid inviting unwanted attention.

The Houston Food Bank is grateful to AIG American General for contributing a lead gift of $50,000 to help launch the program.

The backpack program concept is carried out through food banks all across the country. It started in Little Rock, Arkansas, when a school nurse asked for help because hungry students were coming to her with stomach aches and dizziness. The local food bank began providing the children with groceries in nondescript backpacks to carry home.

Nationally, food banks distribute as many as 25,000 backpacks each week. The Houston Food Bank program is beginning with 100 students at each of two schools in the fall of 2006, and will continue to expand.

Contact:
Catalina Quesada.
Director, Nutrition Services
713-547-8663
cquesada@houstonfoodbank.org 

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