What is a Backpack Program?
RVFB partners with seven schools in south Seattle to provide students and families with nutritious food for the weekend—enough food for two days including breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack item. Our bags always include fresh fruits, vegetables, and meat, and often include eggs and dairy. Site coordinators at the schools we partner with distribute the bags of food to students and communicate with parents to ensure that they have access to our services. We cater the content of our food bags to the community of the school we are partnering with and strive to provide culturally relevant groceries such as Halal and Kosher foods.
Here are some quotes from community partners that make our Backpack Program possible:
“Every backpack program is unique. Each community and school has its own culture, personality, and idiosyncrasies. Generally, backpack programs provide a bag of child-friendly food to students in need that they can take home and eat when school meal programs are unavailable. Distributing the food on Friday helps to ensure that the food is eaten over the weekend and not through the week. This Friday distribution is also handled in many different ways. Some site coordinators drop the bags off at the last class of day and the teachers help in final distribution. Others call students down anonymously to the counselor’s office or are quietly dismissed early to pick up food from a specific location.”
– Northwest Harvest, Seattle WA
“I am a proud partner of Rainier Valley Bank, a thankful employee of Seattle Public Schools, and a parent and community member of the zip code 98118. A lot of low-income families are subjected to eating fast food because it’s cheap and easily accessible. A lot of families do not want to ask for help or are ashamed to do so. It takes a lot of courage to do so.
The idea of Food Bag Friday “FBF” stems just from that. Having fresh and healthy foods available to those who need it, without always having to ask. We do this on Friday to ensure kids will have a healthy meal to eat during the weekend. We cannot expect the students to learn if they are worried about food and where their next meal will come from. Even during summer, when students attend summer school, we continue the program.
It has been such a wonderful joy to see how the families have responded to this resource. It has helped with family engagement—PTA volunteers show up weekly and help pack the 50 bags! It allows me to have a personal face to face relationship building time when families come in for the week. In addition to that, it teaches the students a sense of responsibility. Everyone is so happy walking out the front door with their food bag for the weekend. They ask every Friday, “Are we getting food bags today?” My response is, “Of course!” with a smile.”– Brittany Sampson, RVFB Backpack Program Family Advocate at Emerson Elementary
“We currently have 36 families living in precarious conditions in our school. The need to have a partner such as RVFB in our community is imperative. RVFB serves those 36 families weekly with nutritious food. It offers an excellent service to our families by delivering to homes or at our school.”
– Juan Carlos, RVFB Backpack Program Family Support Worker at Beacon Hill International
“The quality of RVFB’s food is substantial. My family can eat healthy thanks to the generous help of RVFB”.
– Mother of student/backpack program recipient
“The level of willingness, work and love that RVFB puts into our partnership with them to help our families is something that has never been seen in any non-profit organization throughout all my years working with families in Seattle Public Schools. It is a blessing to find and get the help from organizations that offer so much love to communities suffering from hunger”
This is a little rough, and kinda my ramblings – let me know if it’s not what you were looking for I can come up with some other content
– Social Worker from School
Our vision of a hunger-free community depends largely on both immediate solutions like the Backpack Program, as well as on addressing root causes of poverty. The relationships we’ve built with schools is one way we come together to acknowledge these issues and put them on the forefront of our conscience as individuals and as a community. As we move forward into 2019, we have identified Legislative priorities in Olympia to support our community’s immediate needs and address root causes of poverty.
Rainier Valley Food Bank supports the following Anti Hunger Priorities from the Anti Hunger and Nutrition Coalition:
Provide funds for fruit & vegetable programs for SNAP and WIC households.
Eliminate school lunch co-pay to ensure access for all low-income students.
Help schools provide adequate time for lunch for all students.
Hunger-free students’ Bill of Rights.
Invest in the sustainability of WADA’s Farm to School Program & Farm to Food Pantry Program.
Connect farmers to local schools, food pantries, and other local buyers.
Rainier Valley Food Bank supports the following Anti-Poverty Priorities from the Anti Hunger and Nutrition Coalition:
Reform TANF/Workfirst to help families with children living in poverty.
Increase housing and essential need (HEN) funding.
Improve protections for renters to reduce housing instability and homelessness.
Adapt TANF and working connections to support parenting teens.
Want to get involved?!
From packing up groceries onsite at RVFB, to delivering bags of food to schools, we are always in need of volunteers to assist with our Backpack Program. You can also join us in Olympia each January as we advocate for legislative priorities to support our community’s immediate needs and address the root causes of poverty. Email Olivia Reed, RVFB’s Youth and Community Organizer at olivia@rvfb.org to get involved!