FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Building a New Model – Balancing Need with Health and Nutrition
by Rebecca L. Lucore
August 9, 2024
As summer is quickly winding down, families are gearing up for back to school and embarking on shopping trips in search of composition notebooks, colored pencils, and binders of varying sizes and themes. Many years ago, I remember the excitement of going to the mall with my mother in search of my backpack. It was my mobile locker that carried books and supplies, my lunch, and those special handwritten notes for my friends.
Today the backpack is still synonymous with school, not just to carry books, but to distribute kid-friendly snacks and meals to thousands of food insecure children across the region.
Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank’s Backpack program has been serving mostly elementary school students in our region for nine years as that age is at a critical stage of growth and development. They are also the least able to secure food on their own. These bags include mostly shelf-stable single-serve items and are usually distributed on Fridays or before holidays to sustain a child through the weekend or school break when they don’t have access to school meals.
While providing snacks and quick and easy food is the goal, health and nutrition is also a focus and front and center. The Food Bank’s Child Nutrition Partnerships Specialist, Valerie Morgan, explained their efforts to make the program’s need for shelf-stable food more nutritious. “We know shelf-stable foods often contain a lot of preservatives, but the nature of this program requires it. We encourage our partners to order healthy options for packing the bags, and we keep items like 1 percent shelf-stable milk, 100 percent fruit juice, no-sugar added fruit cups, and no-salt added vegetable cups in our inventory,” Morgan added, “We are also working to increase the use of fresh produce in backpack bags, as various grant funding comes through, we are able to support partners with refrigeration. We now have two large Food Bank partners incorporating fruit in their bags, each serving around 500 children and 2000 backpacks monthly. These partners include an apple or orange in each bag because they can hold up during transport to make it home with children in good shape.”
Just like any organization developing strategies to make programs more sustainable, there are challenges and costs to do so. Some of the challenges that the Food Bank and its partners face are the increased costs to add fresh food to these backpacks, the needed refrigeration, and the people power it takes for packing and delivering backpack bags. As an organization, the Food Bank has done things to make it easier for their partners like providing pre-packed bags for those who do not have the capacity to pack their own. In the 23-24 school year alone, volunteers and staff at the Food Bank packed 19,000 bags that were purchased for 5 different school systems. “Each year we have seen this need for pre-packed bags go up as school employees take on more responsibilities,” Morgan said.
The Food Bank really excels at maintaining dignity and developing new models to make current programs more sustainable. The backpack program gives a lot of autonomy to schools to identify children in need and works with school personal to distribute the backpack bags in a discreet manner, such as putting them into children's bags when students are out of the classroom or allowing pick-up in the nurse’s office.
The Food Bank has identified other opportunities to update their program. They see an opportunity to convert Backpack programs into School Pantries. This allows children the option to choose foods they like and can also feed the entire family, rather than just the children. School Pantries can offer a large assortment of fresh and frozen products like vegetables and meats, which are more nutritious. The Food Bank offers a similar model in their general food distribution by inviting clients into their Market to shop and select the food they want to cook and eat. A focus of both these programs is on more nutrition and on maintaining dignity.
When asked about the growing need for these programs, Morgan commented, “We are currently seeing 1 in 6 children in this region as food insecure and the percentage of free/reduced priced meals enrollment in all school districts in our service area has increased. Of the Food Bank’s 38 active Backpack Programs, 6 were new programs in 23-24 school year and 2 expanded their programs into new areas. Overall, in the 23-24 school year the Food Bank's partners distributed more than 223,000 backpacks to 7,500 students at 150 locations.”
How You Can Help
You can make donations to Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank specifically noting the Backpack Program. 100 percent of these donations are equitably passed on to Food Bank partners for purchasing food for their programs.
You can also sign up to volunteer at the Food Bank where you can be involved in packing pre-packed backpack bags. If you sign-up for a Family volunteer day, there is a high likelihood that you will be working on Backpack packing.
Corporate groups are also invited to pack bags off-site and donate them to the Food Bank for distribution to their Child Nutrition Partners. Please contact Jennifer Zgurich at jzgurich@pittsburghfoodbank.org for more information on this.
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