Members of 100 Women Who Care Jasper County selected Jasper County Blessings in a Backpack as the recipient of the $5,200 contribution collected at its first membership meeting of 2017 on April 6 at the Jasper County Senior Citizens Center in Newton.
Blessings in a Backpack is a nation-wide program that provides food insecure students with enough food to ensure that they do not go hungry during weekends and holidays away from school.
Jasper County Blessings in a Backpack currently serves 175 students every week. The program is completely anonymous, so program coordinators are not aware of the families that participate. Volunteers work with the administration of each school building to determine how many bags they need. Blessings in a Backpack provides support throughout each school ranging from kindergarten through high school.
On Fridays, the students that participate receive a grocery bag containing six to eight non-perishable food items. The grocery bags are placed in the students’ backpacks privately to protect the identity of those students who participate in the program.
Meredith Fulton represented Jasper County’s Blessings in a Backpack program at the first membership meeting of 100 Women Who Care Jasper County.
