9486 in the collection
Needy students given food for weekend
Of course it is Good News that children are getting this food. But why, in a country as wealthy as ours, doesn't someone who works fulltime earn a living wage?
The article mentions that Wal-Mart contributes to the program. It fails to mention that Wal-Mart's low wages and lack of benefits force many of its employees onto public assistance. As Dollars and Sense put it, "In other words, by providing financial assistance in various forms to Wal-Mart employees, the federal and state governments are essentially subsidizing the corporation for its substandard wages and benefits." The kind of welfare Wal-Mart gets is rarely mentioned in the press. And of course there's the other kind: financial incentives to get Wal-Mart to build in an area. The group Good Jobs First found that over 90% of Wal-Mart facilities received public subsidies such as tax abatement.
By Wendy Koch
Today and every Friday, more than 50,000 children are taking backpacks full of food home from school in programs that have quietly swept the nation. The goal is to keep needy kids and their families from going hungry on weekends.
More than 120 food banks are distributing backpacks at 1,200 sites — mostly schools — in 40 states, up from about 30 food banks in a handful of states three years ago, according to Maura Daly of America's Second Harvest, a network of food banks.
Funding for the BackPack Program has come from individuals, civic groups, churches and companies, including Wal-Mart. "There's a real concern about childhood hunger in the United States," Daly says.
Hilary Duff, 19, TV's Lizzie McGuire, worked with another hunger-relief group, USA Harvest, to launch Blessings in a Backpack. Begun in July 2005 at two schools in Louisville, it will serve eight schools in four states by next month. Duff funds weekend meals for about 1,000 kids at a Los Angeles grade school.
Each backpack contains several pounds of healthful foods such as fruit cups, bread, milk, juice, crackers, beef stew and peanut butter.
"Healthy eating is really important for school-age children," says John Cook, a professor at Boston University Medical Center. Without it, he says, they can be grumpy and have trouble paying attention. They act out more and get lower grades, he says.
An estimated 12.4 million children live in U.S. households that were uncertain about having or could not get enough food at least part of the year, according to a survey by the Department of Agriculture. The number of low-income students receiving free lunches at school has increased from less than 3 million in 1969, when record-keeping began, to nearly 15 million last year.
Those meals feed kids during the week, but teachers noticed some students hoarding food on Friday and coming to school lethargic and hungry on Monday. "Some were going to the dumpsters," says Rodney Bivens of the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma.
Bivens began his program five years ago after a boy passed out at school one Monday morning. The principal found out the student had eaten nothing over the weekend but a hot dog without a bun.
"We were just shocked," says Bivens, whose program expects to serve 7,500 students at 250 elementary schools by next May. "Our goal is to keep that child in school." Bivens says the program has lowered absenteeism and improved behavior.
The backpacks are the same kind that kids put schoolwork in, so there's no stigma to carrying one home, says Heather Brennan, a social worker at Crestview Elementary School in Kansas City, Mo. She says kids want to be in the program so they can help their families.
Crystle Allen is a single mother of three boys at Crestview who get backpacks every week.
"They look forward to Fridays," she says. She works full-time at a day care center but says she can't afford to buy the healthful snacks her boys receive.
The program "has been amazingly helpful," Allen says. "I'm so grateful."
— Wendy Koch
USA Today
2007-09-14
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