Becker’s Backpack Buddies program is entering their seventh school year of reducing the effects of childhood hunger.

 

Becker Backpack Buddies provides easy-to-prepare meals over the weekends to children in food-insecure homes in the Becker area. Students are given these meals at school in a brown paper bag to take home on Fridays. School staff and volunteers discreetly deliver the bags to the students’ lockers — serving over 100 students in all four of the Becker schools.

 

Each brown paper bag contains seven individually wrapped meal items that are purchased in bulk and repackaged for each child. The meal costs about $2.50 per bag to create. Becker Backpack Buddies — in order to fully fund their program for the school year — needs about $10,000 to provide weekend meals for the 110+ students each week.

 

BBB will be holding a “Packing Meals” session Nov. 17 beginning at 9 a.m. at Grace Lutheran Church on Edgewood Street in Becker. The groups mass-pack meals twice a year on that Saturday morning, taking two-to-three hours to complete. BBB also is looking for volunteers to help set up the event Friday at 4 p.m.

 

Attending a packing event is a great way to learn more about the organization, organizers say.

 

For more information or to get involved, contact any of the board members — Chris Salvevold, Jodi Eickhoff, Amanda Haugen, Karen Wipper, Julie Volk, Jennifer Olson-Burkman, Patty Cleaver or Jenny Norton — or send an email to cbefc@izoom.net.