The Second Harvest School Backpack program sends backpack food bags home with students over the weekend when school meals are not available. The program ensures that kids won't go hungry and will come back to school ready to learn on Monday. These are some of the comments from area teachers/administrators regarding the program:
- "A student had to be absent when backpacks were distributed. She wrote a note begging me to make sure one of her siblings brought her backpack home."
- "One benefit is how much it helps with snack time. They (the kids) save the snacks for school so they aren’t embarrassed to ask for one from a teacher or be the only one left out."
- "We had snow predicted one Thursday. A student said they were glad we didn't have snow because he wouldn't have had anything to eat over the weekend because he knew BackPacks where passed out on Fridays."
- "There are no longer students asking classmates for the food they were going to throw away to wrap up in their pocket to take home to eat at night."