One Backpack At A Time

St. John’s Episcopal Church Feeds Students in Need, One Backpack At A Time.

If you are young and homeless, perhaps your only chance to eat is at school, where you can get breakfast and lunch during the week. But on the weekends, you are forced to scrounge.

What many people don’t realize is that Globe-Miami has a homeless problem, and that includes a lot of homeless youth. Within that population, high school students are more likely to get thrown out of the house than any other age group. Sometimes its a matter of parents choosing to spend money on alcohol or drugs, instead of their kids.

“A lot of them are literally homeless in a sleeping bag,” says Kelly Byrne, a member of St. John’s Episcopal Church. “And a lot of them jump from one friend’s house to another because they’ve been kicked out of their own house. There is so much you don’t know until you work with a school.”

“None of us really realized there was a homeless problem in our area,” adds Cathy Lamont, another member of the church.

But when Byrne, Lamont and other members of St. John’s learned of the young homeless population in Miami, they assumed there was a similar problem in Globe.

And there is. Between Miami, Globe and Liberty High Schools, and Globe Literacy Center, members of the church have learned of 13 students who are homeless or living in a crisis situation.

It is yet to be determined how many others there are in the area.

“A lot of people are asking how many homeless teens there are,” Byrne says. “We are still collecting statistics.”

In an attempt to help these students, the outreach committee of St. John’s, including Byrne and Lamont, created a local backpack program modeled after a similar program in Phoenix this past summer. They connected with counselors, nurses, coaches and teachers at the four schools to find out how many students were at each, and going hungry. They began filling backpacks with food, three-days worth to feed each student over the weekends, and distributing them to the schools.

The catch is, none of the members of the committee know the students they are serving.

“It’s a great system. We can still communicate with the student, but we don’t know who they are. If we saw them on the street, we wouldn’t know,” Lamont says.

The program is designed to be completely anonymous, “that way [the students] can keep their dignity, nobody knows what they are carrying,” she adds. “Kids don’t want to be embarrassed, they don’t want to stand out.”

Each backpack is identical, except that they have labels with codes like “GEC1,” “GEC4,” etc., so each student gets a personalized backpack. There is a form in each backpack that the students fill out, listing any food allergies they have, or asking for additional items, like toiletries, underwear and socks. The backpacks are filled on Sundays, and then dropped off in the school offices, where students pick them up on the way home before the weekend.

The only way the committee can find out about a new student in need is through a nurse or counselor, or someone the student feels comfortable confiding in.

“Sometimes students will come to me and say they’re hungry,” says Maria Antonia Johnson. She has been the school nurse at Miami High for the last three years, and serves as a liaison between the committee and the students who want to join the program. A lot of students know her.

“I’ll ask them questions like, ‘Did you not eat breakfast today?’ They’ll tell me ‘no’ and I’ll ask them why,” she says.

“Sometimes they will tell me and sometimes they won’t,” she continues. “It just depends on how comfortable they feel talking to me.”

Thanks to individuals like Johnson, in just a matter of months since the program began, the number of students served has increased from eight to 13 between the four schools. The responses have been incredibly positive.

“The students have expressed how grateful they’ve been,” Johnson says.

“The forms ask students if they need toothpaste, a toothbrush, shampoo, clothing,” she says. “Anything that they need that’s going to benefit them, so they come to school everyday and feel comfortable enough to be around the other students, because students can be very mean.”

Now the committee is working on outreach, educating teachers and administrators on how to identify other students in need. As the program is becoming more popular, they are also looking for more donations and volunteers.

“We’re not going to turn a kid down,” Lamont says firmly.

Currently, the program is run by ten committee members from St. John’s. They take turns buying food for the backpacks weekly, shopping for things like: cheese and crackers, fruit cups, individually-boxed cereals, granola bars, juice packs, and canned foods with pull-off lids.

They focus on getting foods that have simple packaging, don’t require refrigeration, can be carried in a backpack without being crushed, and don’t require heating or preparation.

“If you’re on the street, [it needs to be] something easy to eat,” Lamont explains.

They also focus on keeping the foods healthy and low in sugar.

The committee also asks for food donations from the community, collected in donation boxes at various drop-off locations around town. Whatever doesn’t fit in the backpacks is donated to local families in need. The program has also received generous donations from the likes of Carlota Mining Company, which contributed $6000 to the initial project, plus individual donors. The committee plans on holding more fundraisers, too, like the bake sale, spaghetti dinner and ice cream social held over the summer.

Now, they are contemplating how to get food to students during longer periods, like Easter break.

Already, the backpacks are brimming by the time the students get them.

“It’s amazing how much goes into those backpacks. Three meals a day for three days,” Lamont says. “They can’t carry a whole lot more than we give them.”