Stewart students take home food for weekend

    Stewart Elementary School has begun a program of distributing backpacks full of food to children of low-income households. The backpacks are given to the children on Friday and are meant to supply them with nutritious meals over the weekend. The program was piloted at Stewart last spring, and was considered by school personnel to be a tremendous success. Today is the first day of the program for this school year.

    Krista Andersen works at HACAP (Hawkeye Area Community Action Program) and is the coordinator of this program known as ?Operation Backpack.? The food for the program comes from the HACAP Food Reservoir in Hiawatha. Each backpack contains 4-7 pounds of food, and includes items for breakfast, lunch and supper.

    Andersen said that a community partner picks up the food at the food reservoir, puts it in the backpacks and delivers them to the school. In Washington?s case, the community partner is St. James School. Every Wednesday, the students at St. James fill the book bags with food and then transport them to Stewart Elementary.

    During last year?s pilot program, Stewart had 25 kids participate in the program. This year, the school has 36. Andersen said the backpacks contain a wide variety of food for the kids.

?We include shelf-staple milk, which does not require refrigeration before it?s opened,? said Andersen. ?We include 100 percent juice boxes. For breakfast, we include a range of cereals. We put in other things such as a Special K bar, a Fiber One bar, or instant oatmeal.?

Andersen said that for lunch, the backpacks contain foods such as canned pasta, spaghetti and meatballs, and beans and franks.

?The meals vary depending upon what we have on hand at the food reservoir,? said Andersen. ?We like to send a jar of peanut butter once per month. I always send a couple of snack items, from cookies to crackers to granola bars. We also have apples to give out this month.?

Stewart Principal Rhoda Harris said the majority of the food items are things kids can make themselves. Certain foods, like macaroni and cheese, require adult supervision.

?The backpacks are not necessarily designed to cover all meals over the weekend,? said Harris.

Harris said the purpose of ?Operation Backpack? is to provide food-insecure households with food to allow children to get through the weekend. She said a survey was conducted at the end of last year to determine how the program was perceived by the students. She said ?Operation Backpack? was given glowing reviews.

For more, see our Sept. 24 print edition.