North Texas Food Bank helps thousands of local school children

Dallas, TX - Many children in North Texas rely on school meals to keep them from being hungry, but those meals can’t stave off the roar of an empty stomach on Saturday and Sunday.  That’s where the North Texas Food Bank’s Food 4 Kids program steps in to assist, by supplying as many as 10,000 children each week with backpacks of food they can take home for the weekend.

“They just can’t wait to open the bag up,” said Rachel Gonzalez, who’s raising five grandchildren — ages 7, 9, 10, 11 and 12 — on a single income.

The North Texas Food Bank, one of 23 agencies receiving donations this year through The Dallas Morning News Charities, has been in operation since 1982 and serves 13 North Texas counties, including Dallas, Denton, Collin, Fannin, Rockwall, Hunt, Grayson, Kaufman, Ellis, Navarro, Lamar, Delta and Hopkins, by providing healthy food to those in need.

The NTFB is a certified member of Feeding America Food Bank Network, the largest hunger relief network in the U.S. Food 4 Kids started out by serving two sites in the Richardson Independent School District in 2004, and by 2007 was serving nearly 100 sites.

The program now serves 330 sites and 10,000 children, with plans to increase the number to 350 and reach at least 12,000 children by the end of 2012, NTFB Child Programs director Taylor Hanna said.

“What I hear from parents is them just thanking us over and over,” said Sharon Foster, site coordinator for the NTFB Food 4 Kids program and physical education teacher at Bowie Elementary School in Dallas. Educators identify students who can benefit from the food bank’s program and recommend them to the site’s coordinator.

Sometimes, teachers are prompted by children who come to school saying they are hungry; other times, the teacher is aware of parents who have lost their jobs or have had some other crisis in their family.

The agency relies on about 500 volunteers each week to keep the food bank operating efficiently. Volunteers fill the backpacks with “kid-friendly, shelf-stable foods,” said Hanna, and they are distributed to schools, community centers and after-school programs throughout the year.

Children take home the backpacks and return them on Monday so they can be filled again for the next weekend. It costs approximately $5 to fill each backpack with enough food to provide approximately 60 percent of the child’s nutritional needs for the weekend.

“Right now, we’re really struggling with volunteers,” said NTFB Communications and Public Affairs Coordinator Diana Alvarez, who noted that the food bank recently had a day without any volunteers.

For some families, the healthy food that’s distributed to their children through Food 4 Kids helps free up income for other expenses. Gonzalez said there are times she doesn’t have milk in her home, so she said it helps fill the void.

“With God’s grace, I just make it through every day,” Gonzalez said. 

North Texas Food Bank
Address: 4500 S. Cockrell Hill Road, Dallas 75236
Phone: 214-330-1396
Website: ntfb.org
Social Media: Facebook.com/feednorthtexas and Twitter.com/ntfb
Mission: The North Texas Food Bank was established to address the issue of hunger in the North Texas area by securing donations of surplus unmarketable but wholesome foods and grocery products for distribution through a network of charitable organizations dedicated to feeding the hungry in 13 North Texas counties.  

Source: Dallas Morning News