Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Weekend food backpacks help fill empty cupboards

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Claudia Elliot and Christina Klossner give endless hours to the cause of hunger. They do it anonymously. 

Elliot, of the Leavenworth Community United Methodist Church, and Klossner, of the Leavenworth Church of the Nazarene, are the coordinators of the Weekend Food BackPacks program for the Cascade School District. This program provides bags of food on Fridays to every child who receives free and reduced breakfasts and lunches and has his/her parent’s permission.

Elliot began the Weekend Food BackPack program in the fall of 2013, modeled after the “Packing Friendship” program in Wenatchee. Cascade is a relatively small district, but the needs are great. The Leavenworth Community United Methodist Church with a congregation of about 120 started feeding all registered kids in need. Elliot has been at the helm since the beginning, though she leads a squad of volunteers, including friend Mary Nelson.

In 2015 the Leavenworth Church of the Nazarene joined the project, adopting Osborn Elementary. Klossner is aided by Pastor Becky Goodman and volunteer Shelly Marshall.

At this time, there are 23 children at Osborn and 30 children at the other schools who participate in this program. Elliot also prepares 18 food bags for the K-12 school in Pateros, which are delivered via her daughter Jean, a math teacher there.

Elliot added the Pateros school after the fires ravaged the area in 2014. Some Pateros residents who lost their homes have not fully recovered, surviving in pop-up trailers, even through the winter. The Weekend Food BackPacks are a boon to those struggling to make ends meet.

The coordinators only know the number of bags to fill. “The principals and counselors are the only ones who know the identity of the BackPack kids and their families. Not us,” said Elliot. “And we never pack anything of a Christian influence in the bags, so they don’t know who we are either and can just accept the help feeding their kids.”

Every link in the chain is critical. 

It begins with shopping. Elliot and Klossner have an enormous responsibility, buying bulk foods that balance nutrition and price and also pass a yumminess test for kids. They shop at Costco, the Dollar Store and Grocery Outlet and now with the assistance of a one-time donation from the Leavenworth Chamber of Commerce, they also get bulk food through Dan’s Food Market. The milk is purchased at a discount through the Chelan-Douglas Community Action Food Distribution Center.

The Methodist church utilizes a spacious storage closet, organizing the food in categories of protein, carbs, calcium, breakfast, lunch, fruits and snacks. The Church of the Nazarene has a similarly efficient set-up. 

The food must be nonperishable (with the occasional exception of a fresh apple or cutie orange), and the shoppers are constantly on the hunt for easy, substantial meals. There are the weekly standbys like mac and cheese, and with a can of chicken or tuna, the nutrition value rises. Then there are more innovative foods, like pre-cooked quinoa, pre-cooked lentils or dehydrated hash browns, to give the children and their families ideas of other affordable alternatives.

Packing is done assembly-line style. In the Church of the Nazarene’s kitchen, Klossner and Marshall arranged twenty-three baskets on a table, inserted two plastic bags in each, and then added the food, starting with heavy items, like shelf-stable milk and canned goods.

“Packing the food bags is a science,” Becky Goodman said. It was particularly tricky before spring break, when they gave double the amount of food in each bag.

At the United Methodist Church eight to ten volunteers help pack the food for 45-50 children. The number of recipients changes frequently, as people come and go from this community.

Funds come from a range of sources, including individual donations from the church congregations, the Leavenworth Rotary Club, the Leavenworth Lions Club, and the Packing Friendship program. The Leavenworth Chamber of Commerce held a special fundraising dinner, and donated 100% of the proceeds to the Weekend Food BackPack program. 

Becky Wilkinson, counselor at P.D. and Osborn, oversees the discreet distribution of the food at those schools. She sees a lot of gratitude. She said, “The children who associate me with this project say, ‘Thanks for the food!’”

At the same time other efforts are joining the fight to end hunger locally. Both churches mailed Safeway and Dan’s Market gift cards to the registered families before Thanksgiving. Another local organization called Lunch4Break recently formed to provide boxes of foods for families to bridge the gap of weeklong school breaks. Donors drop off boxes of food according to a specified shopping list and recipients can pick them up at one of three locations. 

This initiative is dear to these volunteers’ hearts for a variety of reasons. Shelly Marshall from the Church of Nazarene said, “I had two kids that went through this school district, and I love to give back.”

“I used to be one of those kids,” said Klossner. “I had a single mom and ate free lunches at school. These kids are dear to my heart.”

When Goodman asked her congregation for help delivering the food once a week to Osborn, she was inundated with volunteers. “Our whole church is behind this work,” she said.

Nelson, speaking of the Methodist Church volunteers, said, “I noticed that all of us have school connections of one sort or another [former teachers and school employees]. We’ve all seen hungry children, and we want to make a difference.”

“The children associate food with school and that’s a good thing,” explained Wilkinson. “Their parents connect the food to school as well, so it’s another way they can see that the school is taking care of their kids.” The building of a trusting relationship is critical, not only to ensure kids have regular meals, but also to make school a place where compassion is as important as learning.

These programs can always use help. For more information about donating time or money, please contact the Leavenworth United Methodist Church at 548-5619 and the Leavenworth Church of the Nazarene at 548-5292. For more information about Lunch4Break, go to the website lunch4break.org.

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