Fighting child poverty!

Our Snack Pack program for Chattanooga inner-city children is set up to feed low-income students who largely depend on school lunches as their primary source of food and are most likely to go home on the weekends to an empty pantry.

School children are able to receive lunches through the Free or Reduced Lunch Program, providing them with nutritious meals on school days. However, many of these children have little or no nutritious food at home to eat during the weekends.

This program provides nutritious food items that can easily be prepared by children when they are home alone, such as juice boxes, applesauce, raisin packs, granola bars, Easy Mac, boxes of cold cereal, peanut butter crackers, fruit snacks, oatmeal, and more.

Each week, the packs contain a different “virtue” card that reminds kids of a specific theme, such as loving your neighbor, being kind to one another, or respecting others.

Volunteers fill the Snack Packs with enough food for the weekend and distribute them to the children afterschool on Fridays and on special holidays. School counselors and neighborhood liaisons identify children needing this program, and the parents authorize their child's involvement.

According to USDA statistics, 21% of Tennessee children live in poverty – 20% are in households that experience “food insecurity.”  During their early years, children need nutritious food to develop – both physically and mentally. Research also shows that hungry children have poorer mental and overall health, miss more days of school, suffer greater rates of behavioral disorders and are less prepared to learn when they are in school.

For approximately $5.25 you can send a child home with one weekend’s worth of healthy snack foods.

For $26.25 you can help 5 children

For $52.50 you can help 10 children

For $131.25 you can help 25 children

For $262.50 you can help 50 children

For $525.00 you can help 100 children