MONTGOMERY VILLAGE, Md., (WUSA) -- Each Friday students in Montgomery Country are able to get food to take home for the weekend. It's all part of a program that is fighting childhood hunger.
This week on Hero Central, we feature Women Who Care Ministries.
For three years, the Helping Kids Eat Backpack Weekend Food Program has been in existence. Six hundred middle and elementary school youngsters are provided two breakfasts, two lunches, and two dinners along with snacks.
The executive director of the program, Judith Clark, explained, "Malnutrition affects the cognitive and developmental growth of a child. Which means that if a child is not fed with the proper nutrition in their formulative years and later on the family financial forecast changes -- still the damage is irreparable."
At South Lake Elementary School in Gaithersburg, counselor Terry Williams says almost 90% of their students receive free breakfast and lunch at the school. Many students depend on the weekend food program.
"This small bag of food is very important to our children. They look forward to it every week. They make a point of coming to school every Friday so that they can get their backpack," shared Williams.
Without these backpacks, many youngsters would go hungry over the weekend. The backpacks are filled with kid friendly, nonperishable, vitamin fortified foods.
Volunteers with Women Who Care Ministries assemble the food sacks each week, deliver them to schools and discretely place the sacks in the youngsters' backpacks.
Williams told us, "They eat a lot of junk food ordinarily or perhaps they don't have regularly prepared meals that are well balanced so we know that they are getting the nutrition that they need and it's so important to their learning."
"When we first started this program, we were really, really excited because we knew that we were stopping a kid's belly from aching over the weekend," remembered Clark.
If you would like to help feed hungry children in our area, Women Who Care Ministries would welcome donations of the following items:
- Tuna, in vacuum packages or 3-oz size cans
- Small cans beefaroni, ravioli, spaghettios, etc.
- Microwavable soups (chicken noodle, etc.)
- Small individ. cups of apple sauce
- Instant Lunch/oodles of noodles
- Small indiv. kid-size boxes cereal
- Nutrigrain fruit bars Easy Mac (macaroni and cheese)
- Small non-perishable puddings
- Individual boxes of juice
- Small cans vienna sausage
Small fruit cups
- small cans of beef stew
Oatmeal packets
- Fruit roll ups/fruit snacks
- cheese crackers and peanut butter crackers
- granola bars
- small boxes of raisins
- small packs of 100-calorie cookies
For more information, contact Women Who Care Ministries at 301-963-8588 or visit their website.