Youths Pack 3,000 Bags Of Breakfast For Homeless, Foster Kids

A record number of volunteers have joined the We Cancerve Movement, Inc.’s annual Breakfast Bags Bonanza, a major food drive that rallies the community to help package individual breakfast meals for area homeless and hungry children. The bags are distributed over the Thanksgiving and Winter holiday school breaks.

More than 1,600 students from schools and clubs in Harford and Baltimore counties, and Baltimore city have supported this year’s efforts to to date. They are affiliated with: Bel Air Middle School; Bel Air United Methodist Church; Boys & Girls Club of Harford County; Edgewood High School GS/IB Program; Edgewood Middle School; Fountain Green Elementary School; Garrison Forest School; Harford Day School; Harford Technical High School; Homestead-Wakefield Elementary School; and William S. James Elementary School.

“I created this project in 2016 because I really began to realize how many children are on free and reduced meal programs, and how many of them go home hungry after school, and stay hungry over the weekend. I can only imagine how hungry they must be over the holiday breaks,” said Grace Callwood, age 15, who founded the We Cancerve Movement at age seven to bring happiness to homeless, sick and foster children. She’s a freshman in the Global Studies International Baccalaureate Program at Edgewood High School.

Saturday, We Cancerve delivered 75 bags to children at INNterim House, a homeless shelter for women and children in Baltimore. The bags were sponsored by the Service-Learning Club at Baltimore’s Garrison Forest School. The members from the all-girls private school held stuffed 250 bags early that morning. It was the second of four planned We Cancerve stuffing parties.

The first was held Friday at Bel Air Middle School where eighth grade students packed 600 bags, which will be delivered to homeless shelters in Harford, Cecil and Baltimore counties, and to the Sharing Table, a major feeding ministry in Edgewood over the next two weeks.

"The most rewarding thing about leading this project was knowing that it would benefit so many children's lives,” said Alexia Dialinos, the eighth-grade student who organized the service-learning project at Bel Air Middle. “It was an awesome feeling knowing that so many of my peers and teachers wanted to help."

On Wednesday, the community is invited to join We Cancerve at the Havre de Grace branch of the Boys & Girls Club of Harford and Cecil Counties for its third stuffing party. They’re scheduled to stuff nearly 450 bags.

Sign up to join them for the November 25 stuffing party at Hall’s Cross Roads Elementary School where they’re stuffing 1,712 bags for children at this Title I school.

We Cancerve became a 2019 Great Neighbors’ school partner in October, and has plans to create new initiatives to benefit the school’s community and family resource center. Earlier this month, they opened a We Cancerve Children’s Library in the center. It’s the nonprofit’s third children’s library.

“I am proud of the Hall's Cross Roads library because it gives the kids and their families a relaxing space to be together and have adventures through reading,” said Ashlee Brockwell, a freshman at Patterson Mill High School. She’s served on the We Cancerve all-youth board of advisors since 2015 and is helping to manage this year's largest collection.

Brockwell said she easily convinced her mother to advocate for a donation from employer, Culinary Services Group, who she says “believes in and supports the Breakfast Bag project enough to make the generous donation of 1,000 individual boxes of cereal. I have talked to parents that are so grateful they don’t have to worry about how they are going to feed their kids breakfast so I’m happy we can do this for their community.”

Brockwell went on to say “I am grateful and blessed to have the opportunity to bring happiness to the children that will get the bags and also seeing the joy it has brought to the community members that have helped. Kids needs to believe they can make a difference and helping other kids is a great way to learn how to support each other.”

Other companies have donated to this effort as well. Giant Food donated a $100 gift card and Bimbo Bakeries donated several cases of Entenmann’sLittle Bites snacks. Professionals as far away as Washington, D.C. have also joined the effort. Hundreds of items were donated from the National Institute for Public Procurement and the Maryland Public Purchasing Association, Inc.

Donations and volunteers are also affiliated with the following community organizations: Harford Community Action Agency; Holy Trinity Outreach—Havre de Grace; Mt Zion Baptist Church Singles Ministry; Grace United Methodist Church; Unitarian Unversalists; Aberdeen Fire Department; First Baptist of Aberdeen; Chick-Fil-A Aberdeen; Legends Distributing; Health Department Office of Drug Control Policy; APGFCU; Mountain Christian Church; HarCo Credit Union; and the Aberdeen Boys & Girls Club.

Helping with the distribution of bags to children on November 26 at Hall's Cross Roads will be members of the Harford County Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.

We Cancerve is a 501c3 founded in 2011 to bring swift solutions to homeless, sick and foster children because happiness shouldn’t have to wait. For more information, please contact us at peoplewhocare@wecancerve.org.