The Food Bank of North Alabama is ready to provide food bags to students to take home over the weekend during the school year.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — As thousands of students across North Alabama head back to the classroom this week, school cafeterias are once again serving up breakfast and lunch. But for many local families, the end of the school week brings a familiar and stressful question: where will the next meal come from?
According to the Food Bank of North Alabama, nearly 60,000 children across the region live with food insecurity. While free and reduced-cost school meal programs ensure students are fed Monday through Friday, weekends can leave stretched families on their own.
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To help bridge that gap, the Food Bank is continuing its Weekend Backpack Program for the new school year, providing shelf-stable, child-friendly food packs directly to students in need.
“This is a program we do during the school year where we work with a lot of our agency partners to provide bags to put in kids’ backpacks over the weekend,” said Bobby Bozeman, Development Director for the Food Bank of North Alabama. “For a lot of our kids, school lunch is the only food they really get during the week, so we have this to help bridge that gap.”
The meal packs are specifically curated with items that young children can open and prepare safely on their own, such as pop-tab cans, cereal, and non-perishable snacks that do not require cooking or heating.
To ensure students do not feel singled out or face stigma from peers, school administrators and teachers discreetly place the food packs inside backpacks before students leave on Friday afternoon.
“Appearances are very important to kids, and nobody wants to be singled out,” Bozeman said. “It’s done very discreetly.”
On average, the program serves roughly 5,500 students every week during the school year through partnerships with about 20 community groups across North Alabama.
Bozeman noted that ensuring students have access to food over the weekend has a direct impact on their performance, mood, and behavior in the classroom come Monday morning.
“If they show up to school hungry on a Monday, they’re not going to learn, and they’re going to be disruptive in class,” Bozeman explained. “It doesn’t just affect that kid; it affects everyone in the classroom. It benefits the entire classroom for everybody in that classroom to be fed.”
The weekend program is a continuation of the food bank’s summer food program. Over the summer break, the organization distributed more than 28,000 food boxes to over 8,400 students across 11 counties.
With the school year now underway, volunteers are back on the packing line at the Food Bank’s Huntsville facility preparing upcoming weekend shipments.
Members of the community looking to support the program can sign up for volunteer packing shifts, drop off easy-open, shelf-stable food donations at the Food Bank’s facility on Phinney Drive, or make a financial contribution online at the Food Bank of North Alabama’s website.
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