Article
Blessings in a Backpack
The LindaBen Foundation has added Prince George’s County in addition to Howard County in its partnership with Blessings in a Backpack!
The Blessings in a Backpack program provides essential food every Friday to children who may otherwise go hungry over the weekend. Schools provide food to kids regularly throughout the week, but what happens when they go home on the weekend? That’s where Blessings comes in.
In Prince George’s County , we plan to feed kids at Beacon Heights and Cooper Lane Elementary Schools. In Howard County, we plan to feed kids at Laurel Woods Elementary, Harper’s Choice Middle School, and Longfellow Elementary. There are a significant number of food-insecure students at these schools, those are kids who might not know where their next meal will come from.
In fact, 86% of the students in those Prince George’s County schools require free or reduced lunches , and 839 of the 1,631 students across the three schools in Howard County are food-insecure. That’s 51.4%! Thankfully, through Blessings in a Backpack LindaBen HoCo, you can provide kids the nutrition they need to grow, learn, thrive, and to be a kid.
The organization provides more than 3 million hunger-free weekends to students in more than 1,000 schools, throughout 45 states and the District of Columbia. Blessings in a Backpack is a national organization, but each local program is responsible for raising its own funds, budgeting accordingly, and delivering food to identified children each week.
The Blessings in a Backpack program powered by the LindaBen Foundation in Howard County feeds 75 kids every Friday of the school year. Over the course of one year, we provide more than 2,600 hunger-free weekends to food-insecure kids at Laurel Woods Elementary (LWES) , Harper’s Choice Middle School (HCMS) , and Longfellow Elementary (LES).
Thank you in advance for supporting our kids. If you have any questions about how we feed kids in our community, please reach out to Annabelle Beavan at abeavan@lindabenfoundation.org. Just $130 feeds a child every weekend for an entire school year! Every donation has a major impact and is always appreciated. Please note all donations are tax-exempt.
Our Mission
Blessings in a Backpack mobilizes communities, individuals, and resources to provide food on the weekends for school-aged children across America who might otherwise go hungry.
Our Vision
Every school-aged child in America has the nourishment needed to learn and grow. As a leader in the movement to end childhood hunger, Blessings in a Backpack strives to ensure children do not go hungry on the weekends by empowering individuals and communities to take action.
Our Impact
Blessings in a Backpack has partnered with Quaker Oats and Ipsos, a leading global market research company, on a national evaluation project that measures program impact on a deeper level than bags and pounds of food distributed. This project involved various Blessings’ stakeholders, such as children and teachers, in the evaluation process. Surveys found that, in addition to no longer feeling weekend hunger pangs, children fed by Blessings experience the following impact on their lives:
- 78% of kids feel cared for by their community.
- 71% of kids feel that Blessings is helping their family.
- 60% of kids have fewer behavioral issues.
- 60% of children report that their school attendance is better.
- 59% find it is easier to learn at school
Our Story – How One Little Apple Started Something Big
In 2005, Missy Hammerstrom was volunteering and eating lunch with the kids at an elementary school in Louisville, Kentucky, when a little girl asked if she could have Missy’s apple. Missy asked why. The girl said she wanted to take the apple home so she would have something to eat over the weekend.
Missy, inspired to prevent childhood hunger on the weekends, teamed up with community leaders to start the first Blessings in a Backpack program at Roosevelt Perry Elementary School in Louisville. The program quickly grew throughout the city and commonwealth of Kentucky.
In December 2008, Blessings in a Backpack opened its first program outside of Kentucky and became a national 501(c)(3) charitable organization. Since then, Blessings in a Backpack has provided 23.5 million hunger-free weekends (bags of food) for more than 838,600 kids nationwide! Factor in dedicated volunteers, partners, and staff, and over 1 million lives have been impacted by our mission… and counting!
Click Here if here and contact us to get involved with Blessings in a Backpack – LindaBen HoCo.
share this
Related Articles
