Fighting hunger in the summer
School may be over, but efforts to fight child hunger will continue over the summer.
To help fund those efforts, the Rotary Club of Butler A.M. presented the Kids' Weekend Backpack Program with a check this week to help keep its larders filled at the Butler School District's six elementary schools.
Lisa Campbell, Rotary president, presented program founder Kim Thomas with a check for $3,314 to go toward the program's work to provide food during the school year for students in kindergarten through fourth grade who might otherwise go hungry over the weekend.
Campbell said, “This is a great cause for our club.
“Members contribute food and money and it's been a service project for the club,” Campbell said, adding the donation came from money raised from Rotary's Carved in Ice fundraiser in February and money collected from Rotary members between Oct. 25 and June 5.
Campbell said the club has donated $4,599 to the backpack program since January 2016, as well as volunteer hours and food donations.
The Kids' Weekend Backpack Program is designed to assist students in the district's elementary schools by providing them with food over the weekend during the school year.
Students participating receive a plastic bag each Friday packed with single-serving snacks and easily prepared meals. The bags are delivered to the students' home rooms and placed in their book bags.
In the just-ended school year, the program helped between 360 and 380 students.
Thomas, a teacher at McQuistion School, started the backpack program with a pilot program at McQuistion three years ago. The next year Northwest and Emily Brittain were added and, halfway through the school year, Center Township joined in. This year Summit and Connoquenessing are participating.
“Moniteau had it. Freeport had it. Butler should have it.
“We thought it would be so easy, 'We'll just throw some food in a bag. It will be easy,” she said “It's not.”
The entire program is run on donations of food or money.
Audray Muscatello Yost, a backpack volunteer and retired teacher, credits the Rotary with keeping the fledging program afloat during its first year.
“Who knows what might have happened,” Yost told Rotary members “if it wasn't for your support those first few months when we had no money at all?”
Thomas said in addition to the Rotary Club of Butler A.M., the backpack program has gotten support from area churches which donate storage space, the St. Vincent DePaul food bank which donates food and local businesses.
“We have a ton of volunteers that help make this possible,” Thomas said.
In addition, Yost said, fundraising efforts at schools such as the district's sixth-graders' Empty Bowl Project in which they made and sold bowls to raise money help.
Thomas said such support has allowed the backpack program to expand to all six elementary schools in the district.
Yost said even though the classrooms are empty, the backpack program's volunteers will be busy, sorting food, delivering soon-to-expire items to St. Vincent DePaul food bank to be used while they are still good, and planning for the group's upcoming fundraiser.
Thomas said the Stuff a Bus event will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. July 10 in front of the Butler YMCA at 338 N. Washington St.
Supporters are to take a nonperishable single-serve food donation to help cram a bus with food and stay for the activities, concession stand, sports and games planned for the day, she said.
Or those wishing to make a direct donation can mail a check made out to the Golden Tornado Scholastic Foundation with the words 'backpack program' on the memo line to: Kim Thomas c/o McQuistion Elementary School, 210 Mechling Drive, Butler, Pa., 16001.
