Our Mission
We believe there is enough to go around! Since 2013 we have been trying to “fill in the gaps” of when people may not have access to food. Our mission is to provide children with food on the weekends when they do not have their school lunch to rely on. We also run a weekly food pantry in the evening hours for people who can’t get to help during the daytime hours. No matter your age “you can’t be awesome when you’re hungry!”
How our program works
Our program is completely private. We do not know the identity of our families. Since Covid we have switched up our backpacks to cloth bags that the families keep.. So every week we pack bags and deliver them Friday to our school nurse. She hands out the bags and the children bring them home to their families. Each bag has two options for breakfast, lunch, and dinner plus snacks and fresh fruit!
Contact Us
Contents of our Backpacks
We started our program in October of 2013 after hearing about a local elementary school who had many families still struggling to get back on their feet after Super storm Sandy. We quickly became a ministry of our church- The United Methodist Church of Red Bank. We ask for certain foods for our backpacks for a few reasons.
Bags
Some of our kids carrying the bags home are little! So we keep the weight of our bags in mind. And no glass!
Nutrition
This is very important to us. We do add “treats” to our bags- but we try to keep the contents healthy. And we add fresh fruit for all the kids!
Foods that we collect:
- granola bars
- mac and cheese
- soup
- small cereal boxes
- small plastic jars of peanut butter
- crackers
- spaghetti and sauce (no glass jars please)
- instant oatmeal packets
- small cans of fruit