$ -

53% of $10,000 goal

Support BackPack Meals and Teen Pantries

Students Need Your Help!

The Education Foundation’s food insecurity programs currently serve approximately 600 kids each week during the school year, as well as several hundred through programs during the summer months. Many of these students are served multiple meals each week through our services which include:

  • BackPack Meals: serving around 300-350 kids each week, these kits provide two breakfasts, two lunches and two snacks for weekends for elementary students. Additional meal kits are provided for school breaks.
  • Teen Pantries: serving roughly 350 kids each week; providing shelf-stable, nutritious, easy to prepare foods and hygiene items for middle and high school students.
  • Elementary Pantries: newly offered in response to demand in spring 2022, these pantries provide evening meal support for elementary students needing more than the BackPack kits provide. The number of individual students served overlaps with the BackPack program numbers.

More Hungry Students

If the rate of increase we’ve seen continues, we can reasonably expect to see the number of kids served each week grow to 750-800 students, 375-400 each for BackPack Meals and Teen Pantries. Our cost to feed these students would be roughly $4,000 per week, assuming inflation levels out.

There are three factors driving the growing demand:

  1. Inflationary pressures and lack of childcare have left many low-income working families needing to make tough choices between food and housing. As food costs have gone up, we've seen a 20% increase in the cost to purchase BackPack Meal kits and Pantry supplies, and a 25% increase in requests for food since March 2022.
  2. The Summer Food Program has provided breakfast the past 2 years but is discontinuing that service.
  3. There is a 10-day gap between the end of school and the start of the Summer Lunch Program.

The Why

Children who don’t eat can’t learn and grow to be adults who can’t earn, setting up a cycle of generational poverty and a lifetime of costly chronic health conditions. While they are in school, the physical discomfort and emotional stress chronically hungry children experience disrupts their education and causes them to disrupt that of other students. Consequently, everyone’s education suffers.

Ginny Mermel PhD, CNS, started the BackPack Meals Program in 2009 and Teen Pantries in 2011. For the last 13 years she, along with her equally dedicated husband Gary, have generously volunteered their time to develop and direct these programs, ensuring efficient, well-funded, nutritionally sound programs keeping kids fed. While Ginny and Gary’s dedication to these programs has ensured their continuity, this role far exceeds what should be asked of a volunteer.

The time has come for Ginny and Gary to retire. After the last BackPack Meal kits for winter break are sent out, Ginny and Gary will seek out their "someday" plans, an extremely well-earned chance to enjoy all life has to offer.

Continuing to support the BackPack Meals and Teen Pantry programs while positioning them to serve the growing need is a significant part of the Education Foundation’s future. In recognition of the importance of "keeping kids fed, fit and ready to learn," (Ginny's life mission) the Education Foundation is fundraising to ensure the financial stability of these programs. We are wholly committed to ensuring both the BackPack Meals and Teen Pantry programs continue serving kids facing food insecurity, and we are working to secure the long-term sustainability for both these programs.

How Can You Help?

The Education Foundation has two immediate needs in securing the future of these programs: 1. Donate to help us purchase food and hygiene items, helping us to cover the steep increases in both food costs and demand for help.

2. Donate to help us create a part-time position coordinating all the food insecurity programs (delivering food, coordinating student needs with counselors, ordering and purchasing food and hygiene items, stocking pantries, etc.). The person hired will be specifically responsible for BackPack Meals, Teen Pantries, and new Elementary Pantries which are being established to address evening meal shortages faced by elementary students.

3. Assure long-term sustainability of our Food Insecurity Programs by building the program endowment. To ensure both the BackPack Meals and Pantry programs become self-sustaining at their current level of need, the endowment needs to increase by $600,000.

Donate Today!

We wish demand for these programs would diminish. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The need continues to grow along with the cost of living. Help us now so we’re prepared to support this growing number of students in need through the summer, and when they return to school in the fall. Thank you for helping us ensure the future of these programs. Reducing hunger, as well as the anxiety and poor academic outcomes that accompany it, is an incredible responsibility - one we couldn’t continue without the help of donors like you.

Verified

Organized by Education Foundation for Billings Public Schools
501(c)(3) Public Charity · EIN 81-0452904
[email protected]