Middle Georgia food bank helps students bridge weekend gap between school meals

The Backpack Program will resume when classes begin, providing students with nutritionally balanced food every Friday.

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) — The Middle Georgia Community Food Bank is helping provide weekend meals for students who rely on school breakfasts and lunches during the week.

While those Monday-through-Friday meals help, some children don’t have reliable food over the weekend. For that reason, the food bank partners with schools and local nonprofits to provide students with a bag of nutritionally balanced food every Friday during the school year.

Supported by local school districts such as Bibb County, the Backpack Program directly combats food insecurity for children who may lack reliable meals over the weekend.

President and CEO of the Middle Georgia Community Food Bank Kathy McCollum says the program helps families fight food insecurity.

“When I talk with people who have been doing this for a long time, they heard about the idea from other communities and said, ‘I know there are children going hungry in Macon on the weekends, because of the reliance on those school meals,'” she said. “So they started it here, and other organizations copied what they were doing, and now we have a number of counties that are being served in this way.”

With 1 in 4 families struggling to secure healthy food in their homes, McCollum believes this program helps.

“I know that a lot of parents are struggling to make sure there is good healthy food for their children,” she said. “Especially those parents who are working on the weekends, are having trouble with the finances of getting that food. But also, in being there when the children need to be eating. So, the food we provide is in child friendly packaging, and it’s food the children like that’s nutritious. We make sure as we’re purchasing these products we’re looking at the nutrition content, so we’re staying away from the high sodium, fat and sugars that are in so many of our processed foods.”

The program will resume when school is back in session. If you or someone you know needs food assistance, contact your child’s school counselor.