What's Happening?
Keeping hunger OFF the menu
Cereal. Oat milk. Bread.
Stacy Camlin lists these items when asked to name his favorite part of the Weekend Backpack Program, launched Oct. 14 in Schenectady County schools.
“We make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,” the fifth-grader at Yates Elementary School in Schenectady said. “We make French toast.”
Stacy and his younger sister Michah, shown below, receive packages of food to bring home on Friday afternoon, along with 58 other students at Yates. Also included in these parcels are fruit, rice, pasta, soup and vegetables.
Students are referred to the Weekend Backpack Program by teachers and staff, who look for signs that they might not have enough to eat at home.
Students at Schenectady schools receive free breakfasts and lunch, but the weekends can be a struggle. The Weekend Backpack Program, a collaboration between county school districts, the City Mission of Schenectady, the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York and The Schenectady Foundation, helps fill the gaps. This year the program will provide almost 900 Schenectady County students with food.
“It helps with the food insecurity that happens over the weekend,” said Megan Jordan, a school counselor who co-coordinates the Weekend Backpack Program at Yates. “Our families work hard to provide for their children. But there’s still a need.”
At Yates, Principal Rob Flanders knows what hunger insecurity looks like among his young charges.
“Kids will hoard food in the classroom,” he said. “They’ll try to take two or three milks and hide them. Often they won’t have a way to get them home, so the food will be in their pockets or their hoodie.”
Other signs of hunger include extreme thinness, always asking when snack time is, a lack of focus in the classroom, sleeping through class and irritability.
These symptoms of food insecurity “have lessened with the Weekend Backpack Program,” Flanders said.
There is still time to support the Weekend Backpack Program and help it grow.
