One in five children in North Carolina is hungry. Heartbreakingly, that number jumps to one in four children under the age of five. Inter-Faith Food Shuttle works to meet the needs of those children when other resources are not available, and you can help. On August 23th at Crabtree Valley Mall and Cary Crossroads from 6am-6pm, Mix 101.5 WRAL-FM is holding their annual BackPack Buddies Food Drive for IFFS. One of our Children's Hunger Relief programs, BackPack Buddies provides weekend meals for food insecure children who otherwise may not eat on the weekends. For the children most in need, the lunch they receive through the free and reduced lunch program on Friday may be the last square meal they eat until breakfast at school on Monday morning. We provide backpacks with 6 balanced meals and two healthy snacks each weekend and break throughout the school year so that they can come to school nourished and ready to learn. This year, we reached more kids than ever before, but we need your support in order to continue to expand the program and provide this service.
Vanna Fox, Bill Jordan, Lynda Loveland, David Crabtree, and other MIX personalities will be live all day from the event. Each year, we are amazed by the generosity and compassion of this community! There are even some individuals who choose to donate whatever they can because they know what it's like to be a hungry child; they were food insecure as children and now want to give back. Mix 101.5 WRAL-FM’s Vanna Fox shares one such story from a previous year:
In 2008, the event raised $6000 and 71,000 pounds of food for children in need right here in the Triangle. In 2009, the event raised $27,000 and 10,000 pounds of food, and it has continued to get bigger and better each year. Last year, we raised 21,000 lbs of food and $55,000 Let’s continue that trend this year and raise more than we’ve ever raised before! You can donate money or food in any amount - every dollar and pound counts!
Here's what to bring: BackPack Buddies items needed
More true stories from people involved with the BackPack Buddies program:
“A family support worker told me that she had been at the home of some brothers who participated in the program on several days when they arrived home from school. She called me to tell me, ‘you would think it is Christmas because they cannot wait to open the bags up and see what food they have that week! They especially like the individual packs of peanut butter.’”
“When asking a 1st grade student what type of food he ate on the weekend, he replied ‘oh... we don’t eat on the weekend.’ When I asked him if he would like to be a ‘BackPack Buddy’ and explained the program to him, he started jumping up and down with an excited look on his face and exclaimed ‘YES, YES, YES!’”
Inter-Faith Food Shuttle also runs a number of other children's hunger relief programs that serve in total over 2,000 children a month through our After-school SNACKS program, Kids Cafes, In-school Pantries, and Summer Feeding. As in our other pro-active hunger-relief programs, we focus on wholesome, healthful foods that provide a foundation for health and a bright future.
To learn more about the event visit http://www.wralfm.com/page.php?page_id=131
To learn more about BackPack Buddies, visit: http://foodshuttle.org/program/backpack-buddies