SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) — Volunteers lined up next to tables and formed what looked like a conveyor belt to pack food into boxes in the Food Bank of Central New York’s warehouse on Wednesday.. The volunteers placed item after item into the boxes, until there was a few days worth of food in each for city school students in need.
This addition to the partnership between the Food Fank and the district will provide for 1,000 students from 11 different schools within the district. They will receive food for the weekend, so they won’t be hungry. Boxes contained ingredients for meals such as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and nacks.
Rachel Murphy, the director of food and nutrition services for the city schools, said the district conducted a study during the pandemic to see which students were missing getting a weekend food package program through Blessings in a Backpack,.
“We found out we were missing a lot of kids who had needs and we could not meet ,, ” Murphy said.
Murphy then reached out to Amalia Swan at the Food Bank to see how this problem could be fixed. They came up with this idea.
“This is incredibly important for the families that we serve, the kids that we serve,” Swan said, “The school district does a phenomenal job and they said they needed a little help so if we could help them that’s what we wanted to do.”
Both organizations want to provide for more students, which makes that the goal for this initiative.
“Food is an essential need and if we can partner with the Food Bank of Central New York to provide that essential service of food for kids on a weekend, nothing better,” Murphy said.
