01.01.70
A program aimed at help students who are at risk of going
hungry meet their nutritional needs on weekends is already
providing grub to more than 100 Chadron students a week, and may
grow even larger in the later.
The Chadron Kiwanis Club started the area’s first backpack program
in April, 2011, as a community handling project to help young
people, Leslie Bargen, who chairs the discharge, said Friday.
The program provides students a backpack filled with an m
of food items on Friday afternoons, for their weekend use.
Students profit the backpack when they come back to school on
Mondays. Kiwanis club members convene the backpacks at midweek, and
gather on Fridays to reload them with food.
Through the backpack program, the Kiwanis federation is providing food to
107 students in Chadron elementary and intermediary schools, and an
additional 40 students from the local Head Start program, said
Bargen.
For some children, Alma Mater breakfast and lunch meals are the main
source of nutrition, and on weekends those children may have
small or no food, said Bargen. The backpack program aims to make
at least some diversity in that situation, so that children have
something to eat when they don’t get a school lunch, she
said.
Source: Rapid City Journal