Food bank works to help the hungry

SANDPOINT — As winter approaches, Bonner Community Food Center officials are busier than ever providing food for hungry bellies.

With the school year moving steadily forward, food bank personnel and volunteers have kicked their backpack program into the regular routine. Now three weeks into operation, the initiative provides 90 Kootenai Elementary School students and 29 Northside Elementary School students with food for the weekend.

“The food this year is more child-friendly, and we’ve reduced operational costs to three-fourths of the price,” food bank director Alice Wallace said.  

Although expensive to operate, the backpack program provides an essential service. Many students in low-income homes rely on their school’s free or reduced lunch program to provide their primary meal of the day. When they go home on Friday for the weekend break, however, they face empty cupboards and refrigerators on Saturday and Sunday. The backpack program addresses this by providing elementary schoolers with knapsacks containing four pounds of nutritious weekend food.

In previous years, backpack program volunteers used available food supplies to fill bags. This year, program directors have found a way to save both time and money by using premade food packs from Second Harvest in Spokane. These packs are cheaper than using food bank supplies, easier to pack into knapsacks and include easily-prepared items like cereal, fruit, shelf-stable milk, granola bars and cans of soup, ravioli or pasta.

See HUNGRY, Page 5

HUNGRY

Continued from Page 1

“These packs don’t require kids to boil water, which is definitely helpful,” Wallace said.

However, the arrangement with Second Harvest locks the food bank into a set number of meals for a semester. While everything is delivered automatically in a very convenient system, it prevents the food bank from adding additional beneficiaries or participating schools until the next semester.

  Despite the value of the service, the backpack program costs some serious coin to operate. It costs $200 a year to cover the costs for a single elementary school students, and with 119 participants this year, the expenses add up fast. Those who wish to sponsor a child for the program should call the food bank at 263-3663. In addition, residents who wish to volunteer for the program’s public outreach efforts can drop by the facility at 1 p.m. on Wednesdays.

Beyond the backpack program, the Bonner Community Food Center is preparing for its annual turkey drive. As with last year, the goal is to obtain 1,000 turkeys for families in need before Thanksgiving rolls around. Food bank associates start signing up people for the drive this Thursday.

With 4,500 individuals now coming to the food bank each month for assistance, Wallace said the end of the year is often a taxing time for the nonprofit, and any assistance is appreciated.

“The community always comes through for us in the end,” she said.