The Backpack Brigade
Alimento para el Nino, a school-based, community-supported food pantry program, fights hunger one backpack and one child at a time.
Story and photos by Sharman Apt Russell
The end of summer, the beginning of school. It is part of the rhythm of being a child. No more lazy, formless days. Now there will be structure, routine, getting up early and being on time. You are a year older and everything will be different — a new classroom, new expectations, new things to learn. Maybe you will really like your third-grade teacher. But you're a little nervous. Because maybe you won't. You'll be seeing your friends more and making new ones. You will lose some freedom, but the truth is you have started to get a little bored with freedom. You are half glad to go back to school and half sorry.
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Student volunteers help deal with food for their
fellow youngsters at the Silver City Volunteer Center. |
A few children will see their first day this August at the Silver Consolidated School District and Cobre School District a little differently. For most of the year, these children depend on the free breakfasts and lunches served in their elementary schools. Many mornings, they come to school hungry. Sometimes they leave in the afternoon knowing there won't be much for dinner. They are especially hungry on Monday morning, after a long weekend. They are especially hungry after a long summer.
In the United States, 33 million people experience some form of hunger or food insecurity. That's one American in 10. Thirteen million of these are children.
In New Mexico, according to the 2006 National Kids Count Data Book, 28 percent of our children live in poverty; 37 percent live in families where no parent has full-time, year-round employment; and 38 percent live in a one-parent household. More and more children live with grandparents who are on a fixed income. Too many children (63 out of 1,000 every year) are born to teenagers aged 15-17.
In Silver City, a worker earning minimum wage makes about $800 a month before taxes. For a single mother, that money alone must pay for rent, heat, electricity, child care, transportation, medicine — and food. Based on information from 52 communities in New Mexico, Silver City ranks eighth in housing costs (with first being the highest in cost), 13th in food costs and 22nd in child-care costs.
In the Silver City and Cobre elementary schools, the majority of children qualify for the federal free and reduced breakfast and lunch program. That number is particularly high at some of the schools in poorer neighborhoods. It is 84 percent at Sixth Street Elementary School. The elementary schools in both districts now serve a free breakfast to everyone since children just don't learn well on an empty stomach.
It is the fall of 2004, and I am researching a book about hunger. The warehouse for the Roadrunner Food Bank in Albuquerque is an impressive place, a cavernous building with aisles of boxes stacked high, bins of cans, and then more boxes, reminiscent of a Sam's or Costco's. But there are no customers here and no cash registers, just workers bringing in food and taking out food. Affiliated with the national organization Second Harvest, Roadrunner Food Bank distributes over 50,000 pounds of food every day and many millions every year. The supplies go to a statewide network of group homes, day care centers, shelters, soup kitchens and other regional food banks. Some of the items are bought in bulk. Much is donated by grocery stores and businesses. The mission of Roadrunner Food Bank is to get rid of hunger in New Mexico. Their motto is, "The sooner you believe it, the sooner we can end it."
What I learn today about hungry people in New Mexico is not really the focus of my research. But I am interested, of course, and saddened. After I am given a tour of the warehouse, the manager and I go into her office, where a child's drawing is tacked on the wall. It does not look like a happy drawing. I am not really sure what these brown blotches and squiggly lines mean, and apparently the child's teacher had the same problem. So the teacher wrote down, underneath the blotches, what the little boy told her: "This is a man who is angry because he just wants food."
Later I will see other drawings from children, and these will be sweet and cheerful pictures, fruit juice boxes and pudding cups and that careful, almost painful handwriting you see in a young writer: "Thank you for the snacks!" "I love the cereal!" "I love my backpack!" These drawings and thank-you notes are from the children in the Roadrunner's program Food for Kids, which sends home backpacks of food every Friday for children in northern New Mexico who might otherwise go hungry over the weekend.
The manager explains the program. School staff identify which children seem to need more than the daily free breakfast and lunch. Sometimes these children can be seen eating their lunches too ravenously or looking through garbage cans after school. Or they simply tell a cafeteria worker or teacher, "I was hungry last night." Usually the school social worker or counselor already know which children are in need of help. Roadrunner provides the school with backpacks and a weekly supply of 12 single-serving, nonperishable items. These items must be something a child can open and eat easily on his or her own. They include 100-percent fruit juice in a box, peanut-butter crackers, granola bars, trail mix, tuna with crackers, applesauce, pudding cups, raisins or other fruit snacks, dry cereal and pop-up cans of beef stew or macaroni and cheese. Extra food is packed for pre-school siblings. The school nurse ensures that the children have no food allergies. All the backpacks look different so as not to stigmatize the child. On Monday, the backpacks are returned, and on Friday they go out again filled with food.
It is a simple idea. Here is a hungry child. Give her a snack. The structure of the program is also simple. The school sends home a letter explaining that this is a new service, which parents can refuse. Hardly anyone does. There is little paperwork. There are no judgments.
At that time I was an elected member of the Silver Consolidated School Board. Naturally I wondered if we needed something like this in our schools, Jose Barrios and Sixth Street, Harrison Schmitt and Stout. The denial of hunger in America is a powerful force that allows hunger to continue and even grow. I didn't really understand denial until I found myself thinking that no, probably, we didn't have very many hungry children in Silver City, not in my school district, not in my neighborhood. Still, I thought, even if there are only a few. Only a handful. Even one is too many.
And I thought of that drawing tacked to the wall in the manager's office: "This man is angry because he just wants food." I thought not so much of malnutrition or the physical consequences of hunger — but of emotional damage. What does a child feel when the adults around her can't or don't provide her with the food she needs? What does it feel like to be hungry as a child, in this land of abundance? How does it feel not to get dinner and not know why? And how does it feel to be the parent of such a child, forced to decide between paying the rent or fixing the car or buying another bag of groceries?
According to the Roadrunner Food Bank in Albuquerque, 20 percent of children in New Mexico miss some meals due to poverty in the home. And, yes, children also miss meals because of substance abuse and neglect in the home, because their caretakers are using alcohol or meth, or because a parent has recently died or gone to jail or is suffering from depression or some other mental illness. The causes of hunger are multiple, complex and often intertwined. The result of hunger is still that pain in the stomach, that sense of emptiness — and loneliness.
A year later, Alimento para el Nino — Nourishment for the Child — began as a pilot program in Silver City's Sixth Street and Harrison Schmitt elementary schools.
This is a story about community. Every step of the way, a door opened. A person helped. Someone said yes. The school board and district supported the program. School staff at the two schools were enthusiastic. The Volunteer Center at 915 Santa Rita St. agreed to be the program's fiscal agent and provided a room where we could store donated food. Ora Rede from Latinas Unidas organized the collection and packing of food. Local grocery stores agreed to donate some food each month. Two large donors stepped forward: the Kiwanis Club and AmBank. The cost of providing one child with weekend food is about $180 for a school year. Suddenly we had enough money in the bank to support 10 children. We were ready. It was time for school staff to identify that handful of kids.
I was still in denial. This was going to be a nice, small program. At my first meeting with the social worker and counselor at Sixth Street, however, I could see that things were not going as planned. Almost immediately — hardly having to think about it — they jotted down the names of 15 children. The social worker and counselor at Harrison Schmitt had the same response. They also had at least 15 names. Suddenly we were three times as big as I had expected. Suddenly we had a waiting list of children.
This fall, in 2007, Alimento para el Nino expects to serve about 32 children at Sixth Street, 24 at Harrison Schmitt, 32 at Stout, 14 at Jose Barrios, 15 at Cliff and 18 at the La Plata middle school. At Cobre, we will continue a pilot program for some 24 children throughout the school year. These numbers are based on the spring of 2007 and will change, going up and down as children come and leave a particular school.
Clearly we are not serving 20 percent of the children in Grant County — more like five percent. Each school is expected to prioritize. Feeding nearly 160 children (times $180) every weekend for an entire school year costs about $29,000. This is a big program.
Here is how we do it.
All over town, people bring in food to the Volunteer Center. One woman told me that whenever she buys snacks for her son's soccer team, she buys extra for Alimento para el Nino. It's so easy, she said. A friend of mine deliberately looks for special buys at discount stores. Our local Albertson's and Food Basket contribute every month. Walmart provides money for backpacks. The Copper Cowbelles donate beef jerky. The Food Coop has made Alimento para el Nino one of its special projects. Every week the coop sends fresh fruit. Then there are the food drives: the Rotary Club, Curves for Women, Harvest Fellowship, the staff at Phelps Dodge, local churches! Ora Rede and her wonderful group of friends continue to collect, monitor and package all this food for Sixth Street and Harrison Schmitt. For now, amazingly, the more than 50 children at these two elementary schools are supported almost entirely by food donations from the community.
People also send in checks. Private individuals sponsor a child for a year. People on fixed incomes send $25 a month, every month. The local United Way has the program on its list of donations. The employees at PNM and WNMU allow employees to give money from their paychecks. Groups like the Quakers, Presbyterians, Town and Garden Club and The Newcomers Club contribute. For the most part, I did not go out and drum up these funds. People heard. They respond.
Businesses in the community help. AmBank gives every year. Western Bank has donated money. Howell Graphic Design created a pamphlet. Phelps Dodge provided the seed money for the pilot program in the Cobre District. The Benwood Foundation in Tennessee has given two significant grants. The Silver School District has been tremendously helpful in finding funds and in lending us the service of their food director who buys all the food for the remaining elementary schools and middle school. Importantly, the district also stores this food in their warehouse and their staff members help distribute it.
Then there are the people who go to the warehouse and pack the food to put into the children's backpacks every Friday. Staff from Children's Medical Services at the Grant County Public Health Office, local members of the Delta Kappa Gamma Society International, the Business Department staff at the Silver Schools, the secretaries at La Plata Middle School — each group has adopted a school as its own. Sometimes children from the middle school and high school also come to pack food as a form of service learning. The Cobre district is evolving its own method of collection and distribution.
This is a home-grown, grassroots, rickety, fragile, bittersweet operation. We take it one year at a time. We still have children on a waiting list. Certainly we need more money and help to expand the program at the Cobre schools. We don't offer weekend snacks in the summer. (Everyone in the hunger business knows that children go hungrier in the summer.) We are not perfect. The food we send home must be well-packaged and well-preserved. It is wrapped in plastic. It is not a home-cooked meal. We miss some children in need. A very few families might not be as needy as we think. We are not tackling the causes of poverty in America. We keep it simple. Here is a hungry child. Give her a snack.
My own interest in hunger started many years ago with the book World Hunger: Twelve Myths by Frances Moore Lappe. There she asks the question, "What can you do about world hunger?" And she answers, "Do what you do best." That's what I tell people when they ask how they can help our local program. If you are good at making money, send money. If you are a canny shopper, buy and donate food. If you are a great organizer, organize a food drive. If you think big, begin a summer program — or start another school-based food pantry program in a community like Lordsburg or Reserve or Deming. And if you can write grants, please contact us immediately!
At Stout Elementary School, I am meeting with the school social worker, counselor and principal. "It's made a tremendous difference to these kids," the counselor says. "They love it." She believes that for a few children these 12 snack items are all they eat over the weekend. For most, however, the food is an important supplement, particularly at the end of the month before the family's next paycheck. Some of the children don't usually get this kind of snack — apple juice, granola bars, beef stew. It adds a certain sparkle to their lives. A certain fun.
The principal says that giving out the food allows her staff to have one more relationship with the child. It is another chance to give that first-grader a hug. It is another kind of relationship with the parent, too. "We're not asking them for anything," the principal explains. "We're just offering some help."
"You see the bigger picture and it breaks your heart," the counselor says. "I had no idea what kind of struggle these families — and these little guys — go through. These children are expected to do their homework and learn their ABCs, and how can they? People don't know."
At Jose Barrios Elementary School, the social worker there repeats what many of her colleagues say: "It's not just the food. It's the emotional nurturing. It's showing these children that someone cares, that we are watching them, we are thinking about them."
Everyone agrees that the hard part is telling some children that they can't also have a backpack of snacks. Fruit Roll-ups and peanut-butter crackers look good to almost any child — but unfortunately we have to prioritize. All the schools hand out the backpacks discreetly. If pressed, a social worker or counselor will simply explain that the program doesn't have enough food for everyone and that some families need this more than others. Poverty. Inequity. Differences. Children already know about these things. Empathy. Compassion. Generosity. These are also the subjects of school.
Only a very few children, usually in the middle school, seem to be uncomfortable about receiving the food. After all, children tend to expect adults to feed them. That's their right as a child.
At Sixth Street, I am meeting with the social worker and another staff member when we hear giggles and knocks at the door. It's Thursday, but this brother and sister will be gone Friday afternoon. They want to know if they can have their snacks now? The social worker laughs. No one wants to miss out. On Friday afternoon, when the children come here to get their backpacks, "It's like a party." The room is crowded. Some of the older children help distribute the food. Some of the smaller children peek to see what's inside, but they all know not to open anything until they get home. Some children are learning to read the nutrition labels, and they organize the snacks for their pre-school siblings at home.
At meetings with groups of children who are in the program, I ask them what they do with the food.
"I hide it in my room." "Where?" I ask. "Under the bed!"
"I put it in my tree house."
"My mom takes everything and puts it in the cupboard."
"I eat half on Saturday and half on Sunday. I divide it up for my little sister, too."
"I eat what I like Friday night and the rest on Saturday."
I ask the children what they like and don't like.
"I love everything!"
"I love the beef jerky!" (This statement produces a chorus of agreement.)
"I love the chocolate pudding!"
"I hate the butterscotch pudding!"
"I hate the chocolate pudding!"
This surprises me. "Do you really hate chocolate pudding?" I question the little girl. "Oh, yes," she says. "But my little brother eats it."
I ask her what we could do to make the program better. She thinks for a moment, "You could have it on Monday, too."
I have learned a lot from Alimento para el Nino. I have learned that this community cares about its children. I have learned that children often first become "visible" in the school system, which is full of hard-working people who deal with too many heartbreaking problems. They juggle much more than the teaching of reading and writing and math — and they need our help. I have learned that children in my neighborhood really do go hungry. The sooner we believe it, the sooner we can end it.
Donations to Alimento para el Nino can be sent to the Volunteer Center at their mailing address, PO Box 416, Silver City, NM 88062. You can also drop off checks and food at the Volunteer Center on Monday through Thursday, 8:30 a.m.-12 noon and 1-4:30 p.m. Appropriate items include 100-percent juice in a box, peanut-butter crackers, granola bars, trail mix, applesauce, pudding cups and fruit snacks. Sources of protein such as small cans of peanut butter, beef jerky and pop-up cans of entrees like beef stew are especially welcome. Food that can be easily prepared, such as boxes of macaroni and cheese, ramen noodles and instant oatmeal, will be passed on to the high-school program for homeless kids or distributed at the discretion of the school social workers. If you have further questions or concerns, please call Sharman Russell at 538-9111 or write to her at 1113 N. West St., Silver City, NM 88061.
Sharman Apt Russell is the author of Hunger: An Unnatural History (Basic Books, 2005). She apologizes in advance if she has left out any helpful organization or business. She would like to thank all the many generous private individuals who have sent money to Alimento para el Nino. She would also like to thank Western New Mexico University for giving her course-release time to write about the program.