Food For Thought Launches School Backpack Program in Watertown

Watertown, Mass. – New this semester, Food For Thought launched a backpack program that discreetly sends bags of food home to food insecure students and families through the Watertown school system. The goal is ensure that students who rely on the school cafeteria as their primary source of nutrition have access to fresh and healthy food at home and over the weekend.

Modeled after Food For Free’s Cambridge Weekend Backpack Program, this program works with volunteer parents and students to sort through breakfast, lunch and snack foods and packs them into bags for students to take home. Every backpack program is slightly different, however, their goals remain the same: to provide access to nutrition for students outside of school so that they are ready to learn the following week.

Founded in 2013, Food For Free’s Cambridge Weekend Backpack Program started as a six-week pilot serving 12 to 15 youth at the Cambridge Montessori School. The program has since been adopted by Food For Free, a Cambridge-based food rescue organization, and has grown to feed nearly 500 youth in 16 schools within the Cambridge Public School System. By the end of this school year, the program will send home nearly 20,000 bags.

“Hunger in America is not only a lack of access to food -- it’s a lack of access to nutrition,” says Alanna Mallon, program director and founder of Food For Free’s Cambridge Weekend Backpack Program. “There are more food insecure families than we realize in our own backyards. Backpack programs provide a way for students to have access to fresh and healthy food outside of school so that when they return to the classroom, they are ready to learn.”

The results speak for themselves. Since the founding of Food For Free’s Cambridge Weekend Backpack Program, participating students are far less likely to go to the school nurse to complain of stomach pain and headaches.

Since 1981, Cambridge-based Food For Free has responded to local hunger by rescuing food that would otherwise go to waste and distributing it to local emergency food programs including food pantries, youth programs, shelters, and more. Through a combination of food rescue, farming, school, and transportation programs, Food For Free’s year-round services give people access to fresh fruits and vegetables which can be lacking in the diets of low-income individuals and families.

As the nation’s first food rescue program, Food For Free feeds more than 30,000 people annually in Boston and beyond distributing food to more than 100 programs in Arlington, Boston, Cambridge, Chelsea, Everett, Lynn, Malden, Medford, Peabody, Somerville, and Watertown. In 2016, Food For Free rescued more than 1.8 million pounds of fresh, healthy food, which translated into almost 1.4 million meals.

To learn more about Food For Free and find out how you can start a backpack program in your school, visit: www.foodforfree.org or call Alanna Mallon at (617) 868-2900.