March 28, 2018
Samantha Rendon, Marketing Specialist

“We cannot think of who, why, when and where, we just have to know we can help them.”

In the San Antonio community, 1 in 4 children is food insecure.  In an elementary school with 600 students, approximately 160 children go home without knowing if they will be fed.

The San Antonio Food Bank offers many programs for children, including the BackPack Program. This program allows the Food Bank to partner with local schools to provide food for children at-risk of going hungry over a weekend or holiday. Through this program, food packs are distributed to children, who are identified by caring teachers and staff members, as showing signs that he or she is living in a high hunger-risk situation.

Marte Neshem is the Family & Community Engagement Liaison at John Glenn Elementary within the Northside ISD. Her role is to ensure student academic success by increasing familial capacity in that all needs are met before, during and after school.

“One of the biggest needs is making sure my kids are fed when they go home and return to school with full bellies,” Neshem says, “so they can come do what they are supposed to do here and that is to learn.”

When Neshem accepted her position three years ago, Glenn Elementary was not a part of the Backpack Program, but she immediately knew there was a need.  Having learned about many programs the San Antonio Food Bank offers, she decided to apply online.

“ [I]finally I got the email I had been waiting for, “Neshem says.  ”We were approved and all of us here were so excited!”

Funding provided to the San Antonio Food Bank allows children, like Marte Nesham’s students, to gain access to healthy meal options when they recess for the weekend.  “We feed about 40 children right now through the backpack program, but I know we still long for about 10 or even 20 more would be great,” Neshem says. “It still isn’t enough. There is a far greater need to feed more children that I hope one day we can fill.”

Neshem also says, “These children didn’t choose who their parents or what type of environment they would be brought up in. We cannot think of who, why, when and where, we just have to know we can help them.”

Not only has the San Antonio Food Bank program helped her students, but it has helped shaped her and her children’s lives as well. Her son, Noah, is a recent graduate of the San Antonio Food Bank Culinary Training Program, an 18-week course where students gain hands-on experience in a production kitchen environment nourishing our community, and she couldn’t be more thankful.

The faces of hunger are often hard to recognize. The San Antonio Food Bank helps feed 58,000 people a week, with a third of those we serve being children.

The BackPack Program 

Schools who participate in the BackPack Program are those that demonstrate a need, according to their respective rates of free/reduced lunch program participation, and located in neighborhoods with limited access to charitable services such as food pantries or soup kitchens. Through this program, food packs are distributed to children who are identified by caring teachers and staff members as showing signs that he or she is living in a high hunger-risk situation.

To learn more about the BackPack Program or to see if you qualify visit https://safoodbank.org/our-programs/programs-for-children/back-pack-program/