This fall, all 6.2 million California public school students can receive a meal each school day for free, regardless of their family’s income. But what about the weekends?
For many students in LA County, a free school lunch is the only full meal they will eat all day.
When teachers began to notice that many students were showing up to school Monday morning hungry and not ready to learn, they reached out to the Food Bank to help. There simply isn’t enough food in many students’ homes to feed them during the weekend. So every Friday, the Food Bank’s BackPack Program sends enough food home with a child to provide them with six healthy meals over the weekend.
In 2021, our BackPack Program distributed more than 7,500 backpacks containing more than 168,000 pounds of food to 850 children. At many of these sites, parents received boxes full of fresh and shelf-stable food for the whole family.
Programs like this are vital to the well-being of our community. The BackPack Program and so many more critical Food Bank initiatives are possible only thanks to the generosity of people like you. Thank you.
Contact Debra Beadle at [email protected] or 310-569-3180 to learn more about including a gift to us in your future plans and helping ensure the BackPak Program and others like it are available to provide meals to our neighbors.