Submitted Sunday, April 15, 2007

Backpacks fill little tummies 

            Homemade macaroni and cheese is Toneah Halsey’s favorite food, and she has a special place in her heart for Nestle Crunch candy bars. But Halsey, 10, is one of thousands of children in North Carolina who may go hungry.

            On a recent Friday afternoon, Toneah sat on her grandmother’s front porch with her brother, Tamonta, 6, and sister, Taniya, 3. Taniya giggled on the lap of her grandfather, Willie Bunch, her tongue a bright red from Hawaiian Punch, while Toneah proudly displayed the contents of a special backpack: a jar of peanut butter, strawberry cereal bar, cans of beans and franks and beef ravioli, grape juice box, bottle of lemon-flavored water and her favorite, a fruit cup.

            Toneah examined her left hand, complete with mauve metallic fingernails glued on with a glue stick. Sitting nearby is her grandmother, Arlene Bunch, who watches the three Halsey children each day after school and cooks them a hot meal for dinner. At school and day care, the children eat breakfast and lunch. But the backpack full of food, courtesy of the Food Bank’s BackPack program, keeps Toneah and her siblings from worrying about going hungry on the weekends.

            According to 2005-06 figures for the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina’s 34-county service area, there are over 405,000 people living at or below the poverty level. Over 30 percent of those people are children.

            While free and reduced breakfast and lunch at public schools help quell the belly rumblings, what happens after school when it’s time for dinner? Or over the weekend? Or even over the summer months when school is not in session?

BackPack Program Bridges Weekend Gap for Hungry Kids

            Toneah Halsey’s five- to eight-pounds of non-perishable food each week are part of a program through America’s Second Harvest, the national Food Bank network. Here in central and eastern North Carolina, Bayer CropScience and the Food Bank aim to help children who may have trouble finding food to eat over the weekend, when free and reduced lunch programs at school are not in operation. After children are identified by teachers, counselors or administrators, their parents must sign a permission form. Then each Friday throughout the school year, “backpackers” take home a full backpack. The only requirement is that they return the backpack each week by Thursday so it can be refilled.

            The Food Bank coordinates five BackPack partnerships in four counties: two in Wake, and one each in Durham, Moore and Franklin counties. Orange and Johnston counties are tagged for expansion. The participating counties have multiple schools that distribute backpacks.

            DJ Dore, who oversees the BackPack program as Director of Programming for Durham Communities in Schools and Americorps VISTA Program Manager, has seen the bare cupboards first-hand. “We do in-home interviews as part of our mentoring program. At one of the homes, I could see into the kitchen. When one of the kids opened the refrigerator, there was nothing inside.”

            That thought is what keeps Durham resident and BackPack volunteer Carolyn Hinton coming back each Thursday to Eastway Elementary School’s cafeteria to stuff the backpacks. “This was supposed to be a one-time thing, but it was just so fulfilling,” she said. “I ended up putting my other commitments on hold so I could keep doing this.”

            Dore echoed her sentiment. “Recently, I went out to a child’s home, and all the kids were eating applesauce. It was great to see—I knew the applesauce was from us.”

            Each Thursday, volunteers in communities around central and eastern North Carolina come together to organize an assembly line of nutritious, non-perishable foods.  In Moore County, there are 12 schools with 12 groups of volunteers who arrive at the Food Bank’s warehouse to stuff the backpacks.

            “Our program has received phenomenal community support,” said Linda Hubbard, Volunteer Coordinator for the Moore County School District. Moore County began sending backpacks home about a year and a half ago. As word spread, Hubbard worked to expand the program into more schools to serve larger numbers of children. Now, she said volunteers can fill 372 backpacks in about one hour.

In addition to support from the Food Bank, Moore County enjoys the support of over 30 churches, which contribute specific food items small enough for children to handle and that fit easily into backpacks.

“A lot of kids are more relaxed because they know they have food to eat over the weekend,” Hubbard said. “One teacher told me, ‘they may not remember their homework on Monday, but they remember to bring back their backpacks.’”

            Hubbard pointed out that Moore County’s rolling hills, horse farms and golf courses obscure the need that exists there. “The BackPack program has created an awareness that there is poverty here,” she said. “It’s a perfectly beautiful place to live, but there is poverty and hunger too, that we need to address.”

Kids Café Provides Warm Meals, Nutrition Education

            Addressing hunger each day after school is the goal of the Food Bank’s Kids Café program.

“You can have my squash,” joked ZaQuan Hunter, 10, to Outreach Director Josephe Featherstone. But in the Kids Café program at Lakewood YMCA in Durham, Hunter was an anomaly. By 4:15 p.m., the white Styrofoam plates that held bean casserole with a side of squash and a biscuit were scraped clean. Bellies full, the third-, fourth- and fifth-graders sat quietly, reading chapter books and sipping juice boxes.

            The Lakewood YMCA is just one of the Kids Café sites where the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina and Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina provides a warm meal after school for children who may not get one at home. There are 21 partnerships in 19 counties in the Food Bank’s service area.

            Beef stroganoff, chicken tenders, corn, grits, string beans… kid-friendly offerings with sides of vegetables are on the menu at Lakewood YMCA. The Food Bank packages and freezes the meals, and Featherstone’s red-shirted, fast-moving afterschool staff heats the food up for the students to eat after devotion and before tutoring begins for End-of-Grade testing.

            Every other week, Kids Café members participate in nutrition counseling to help them make healthy food choices. Featherstone said the kids recently participated in a food pyramid relay race to get them active and educate them about nutrition.

Staff member Maureen Sanders, a senior at N.C. Central University, said the learning extends to the counselors. “The kids are more alert now; the meal gives them more energy,” she said. “We had to experiment with their drinks—over time, we found that apple or orange juice was a better choice than something like fruit punch because the kids didn’t have the sugar rush and crash afterwards.”

In Laurinburg, NC, Afterschool Director James Underwood, Jr. has learned, too. This is his first year offering Kids Café. In previous years, the children received a snack after school.

“Kids Café has added a significant component to the program,” he said. “There is more enthusiasm for the program—the kids look forward to doing their homework, because there is a hot meal at the end of it.”

About fifty 4- to 18-year-olds in Clarkton, NC, go to the Farmers Union Community Development Day Care for a hot meal each school day. Like the Laurinburg program, children here have the advantage of a cook, preparing meals with fresh ingredients.

“The kids come in, and we can tell they haven’t eaten,” said Director Glenda Bryant. “While they’re here, we’re trying to get them to eat healthy. Among the kids, there’s a lot of peer pressure to get each other to eat fruits and veggies.”

Programs Must Scramble to Meet Needs Over Summer Months

            At Bryant’s program in Clarkton, Kids Café operates over the summer, too. But many hunger relief programs end when school lets out for the summer.

            Food Bank Outreach, Evaluations and Programs Manager J. Caprice Brown said his organization attempts to support its partners year-round. But additional support is available for children through a federal program. “We strongly encourage our agencies to participate in the Summer Food Service Program while school is out,” he said.

            To prepare for the warm months ahead, Summer Food Service Program Coordinator Cynthia Ervin works tirelessly to spread the word. Her “Food that’s in when school is out” programming falls under the auspices of the N.C. Department of Health & Human Services Division of Public Health.

            “[SFSP] is an under-utilized program, mostly because many programs have never heard of it,” Ervin said. “It is a federal program, so there is some paperwork involved. But we offer two free meals a day, anywhere where kids congregate in a supervised setting.” Summer camps run by Parks & Recreation, YMCAs or churches can participate.

            Ervin said she is focused on counties with high need and low participation; counties like Wake, Columbus, Sampson, Granville or Vance.

            “Based on statewide data, there are 660,000 children on free and reduced lunch, but our summer feeding programs only serve 100,000 per day,” Ervin said.

            “As a parent myself, I send my kids to camp, and it is a struggle to pack them enough to eat during the day,” she said. “Think of the people who don’t have the food to send.”

Contact Information

To find out more about Kids Café or the BackPack program, you can contact Caprice Brown at the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina: Call (919) 865-3037.

 For more information about the Summer Food Service Program, please contact Cynthia Ervin at N.C. Department of Health & Human Services: Call (919) 707-5774.