In Georgia, over 63% of public school students, or nearly 1.5 million children, qualify for free or reduced lunch. Snack in a Backpack, a nonprofit founded in 2009 with the goal of decreasing childhood hunger, provides weekend and school-break food assistance to children in Georgia.
Debby Beck, Snack in a Backpack’s executive director, shares the organization’s expansion over the years, and highlights the urgent need to tackle malnourishment in Georgia children.
“We serve 12 different locations, schools, preschools and crisis centers,” Beck said. “Each location and school has a team of drivers that rotate, so each does one week per month. Once the weekend meal bags reach the school, they are distributed to classrooms. We are 98% volunteer driven with two part-time staff.”
Beck said Snack in a Backpack serves just over half the children who qualify for free and reduced lunch, offering meal bags to over 500 children weekly during the school year.
“We are Fannin County-based and serve all the public schools, preschools and our local crisis centers,” Beck said. “Fannin County has 70% of children that qualify for free and reduced breakfast and lunch based on household income. We usually help other schools when asked and recently started serving the elementary school in southern Polk County.”
Junior Jesus Santana-Estrada recently founded the Zero Hunger Club at Midtown and believes Snack in a Backpack shares a common objective with the outline he has for combating hunger.
“Our club shares a similar mission with Snack in a Backpack as we both work to help people who struggle to get enough food,” Santana-Estrada said. “Recently, we held a food drive and teamed up with Snack in a Backpack, giving them all the donations we collected to support their cause. From what we’ve learned, it’s an outstanding organization doing incredible work for the community.”
Santana-Estrada was motivated to found the Zero Hunger club after witnessing the needs of the large homeless community in Atlanta.
“What inspired me to start this club was observing the significant needs within the Atlanta community, especially the many homeless individuals throughout the city,” Santana-Estrada said. “While we haven’t accomplished much yet, we’re very hopeful about making a meaningful impact within the student body.”
AP United States History teacher Mary Van Atta began volunteering with Snack in a Backpack’s chapter at Glenn Memorial Church, as well as promoting the nonprofit with Midtown’s 21st-Century Leaders Club. She believes organizations that combat food insecurity are essential to the Midtown community.
“No one should ever go hungry,” Van Atta said. “It is a human right to have food. So, when kids go home over the weekend and don’t have the benefit of free or reduced lunch, they can’t get food; Snack in a Backpack provides that. It fills an important gap that is unfortunate and shouldn’t be happening. Right now that’s a way that a community organization is helping to fill that gap.”
Van Atta highlights the importance of innovative community efforts, which can address the growing demand for assistance in many metro Atlanta areas.
“We need individuals and organizations that are creative and see a need and can fill it,” Van Atta said. “For instance, restaurants might have leftover food that they don’t need. All the food pantries in metro Atlanta are suffering because there is a greater need for food than there is food coming in. In addition to that, I believe that the government can help and continue to help by [continuing] to provide free and reduced lunches.”
Van Atta believes organizations like Snack in a Backpack can inspire a cycle of kindness that lasts for years, which she witnessed in a full-circle moment.
“The organization that I work with that does Snack in a Backpack, which a lot of our students have volunteered at, serves Hope-Hill Elementary School, one of our Midtown cluster schools,” Van Atta said. “There was a young lady who came to me one year … and she wanted to volunteer for Snack in a Backpack. She told me that she had been a kid at Hope-Hill Elementary who received one of the backpacks, because [at one point] her family had gone through some tough times. She wanted to be able to give back because she was in a position where she could help other kids.”
Beck’s ideal objective for Snack in a Backpack is to eventually end the organization’s activities due to loss of necessity. But until then, she will continue to lead operations and offer programs to families experiencing food insecurity.
“As a nonprofit, our ideal goal would be to go out of business, that there would be no more need,” Beck said. “Until that day, we will continue our mission, to decrease the burden of childhood hunger in Fannin County and surrounding areas by providing food-insecure families with a weekend and school vacation food assistance program.”
