We're filling Backpacks with meals for hungry kids in Woodland Hills!
68.6 % of students in Woodland Hills School District are from economically disadvantaged families, making 95% of students eligible to participate in the federal free and reduced-price meal program. While this addresses students’ hunger during school, many return to an empty home on Fridays, with little to no food until they return to school on Monday. Studies have found that often low-income students who go home over the weekend to households with little or nothing to eat return to school on Mondays hungry and unable to concentrate. Studies further show that hunger can lead to a lack of impulse control and unable to control and behavioral issues.
The Backpacks of Hope program provides our most in-need students (K-12) with nutritious, non-perishable, and easy-to-prepare food to help them avoid hunger over the weekend when they cannot depend on school cafeteria meals.
Social workers in each of our schools have identified at least 70 students with an on-going need and every Friday, social workers and other volunteers fill bags with three Saturday and three Sunday meals. The bags are then discreetly placed in student's lockers to take home for the weekend.
The Foundation purchases Easy Mac, Cup of Soup, microwave dinners, tuna and more—all meals that students could potentially make themselves. Food is purchased in bulk to keep costs low and ensure that students receive bags every Friday throughout the school year. Since the program started, the need has grown, and more in-need students are identified throughout the year.
Between 2021 and 2023, we sustained the program for approximately seven months of a ten-month school year.
Because of the generous support of both private donors and the Rotary Club of Swissvale, the Braddock Rotary, Forest Hills Rotary, and Wilkins Churchill Rotary, the program has grown to cover the entire school year (ten months) for approximately 70 students each week.
Your gift of just $10 a month ensures that AT LEAST one student in WHSD won't go home hungry on the weekends for the whole school year!
With humble beginnings, the program identified AT LEAST 70 students per week with an on-going need. But the need is much greater! Our goal in 2024 is to increase the number of students served to 100 per week. And at $2.50 per bag four times a month, that's $1,000 a month over a ten month school year!
Thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor, we are halfway toward our goal!
Thanks to the support of a longtime donor, combined with the efforts of several rotary clubs throughout our District, we are already halfway to our goal for each month of the school year! but in order to keep the program running and to serve a total of 100 students per month, WE NEED YOUR HELP!
Help us reach our monthly goal of $1,000!
