Buddy Bag program provides food for thought

Posted: Saturday, September 12, 2009 12:00 am

Peter Adelsen Perspective staff writer padelsen@kokomoperspective.com | 0 comments

Instead of coming to school hungry after a weekend, students at a local school arrive on Monday with filled stomachs ready to learn.

The percentage of students on free or reduced lunch at Elwood Haynes Elementary School is approximately 84 percent, Deanna Ancil said, director of Project E.A.T., which means Everyone Ate Today. Many students were coming to school hungry and some weren't able to sleep because of headaches, she said. This is not the case anymore with "Buddy Bags" a product of Kokomo Urban Outreach's Project E.A.T. program.

"We found that many of the students were eating at school on Friday for breakfast and were eating their lunch at school and then many times the kids were not eating over the weekend," Ancil said.

This was adopted from the national program created by America's Second Harvest, now named Feeding America.

"We took pieces of it to make it work with Elwood Haynes," she said. "We worked with the staff and the principal to develop the program."

The program began two years ago at the end of the school year as a pilot program, she said. Last year was the first full year delivering the totes of food to each classroom from September through May, she said.

"The totes go to each classroom and the teacher has the names of the students and then they pass them out to the students," she said. "And since it is at the end of the school day on Friday, we know that they are going directly home with that student."

The Buddy Bag packages contain six meals, she said. The meals include a package of oatmeal for breakfast and other items that rotate for lunch and dinner that include food such as canned soup, ramen noodles, peanut butter, macaroni and cheese and a can of tuna, she said. Each bag is identical for that particular week.

The food is ordered through Food Finders Food Bank and they have groups who come to pack the food for each Friday, she said.

Currently 316 students are receiving the Buddy Bags and that number can fluctuate on students coming in and leaving the school, she said.

This year, Leadership Kokomo's Team One is participating in the program.

"We are putting together a marketing program for (Project E.A.T.)," said Sherry Hayes, a Leadership Kokomo volunteer. "We are going out into the community making presentations and we are trying to get more people knowledgeable about the program to get more volunteers and financial contributions and support from the community."

Every year Leadership Kokomo volunteers adopt a community project and team two's six-member team chose to do this program, she said.

"It's a very big thing if kids don't have anything to eat," she said.

Ancil said she would like the program to be at other schools, as well.

"Currently Elwood Haynes is the biggest need right now," Ancil said. "If we had money to go elsewhere we would go to another school."

The program is free for the students, but it costs Kokomo Urban Outreach $110 a year per child. For those who would like to donate, they can do so by contacting any Community First Bank of Howard County and ask about Leadership Kokomo and the Buddy Bag program, said Alison Brantley of the United Way of Howard County.

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