Preventing Weekend Hunger for Fox Chapel Area Children

Early

2015

The Backpack for Hunger program began in early 2015 by a small group of women discussing the 2014 statistic which reported that the Fox Chapel Area School District was the most socioeconomically diverse school district in Pennsylvania. While FCASD is considered to be a very wealthy district, we in fact had about 745 children on the free and reduced lunch program. Many families of these children depend on the meals they receive at school – and when the weekend comes the meals stop. With a desire to provide these children nourishment over the weekend and a few generous donors, the Backpack for Hunger program was started at O'Hara Elementary, Dorseyville Middle School and Fox Chapel Area High School.

December

2015

Backpack for Hunger added Kerr and Hartwood Elementary Schools to the program (previously those two schools had been operating a similar program independently.) This allowed efforts to be centralized and optimized by having one program service the entire school district. By doing this, the operations and finances were combined.

February

2016

Fairview Elementary began offering the Backpack for Hunger program to their students which insured that all students (K-12) in the Fox Chapel School District were offered participation. We are happy to say that no child in this district needs to face a weekend without food.

Hunger doesn’t end in the summer so our efforts continue into the summer by providing weekend food bags to children who participate in several programs servicing our district.

Our History

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Summer

2016