Fr. Ted Said Speaker Series: Blessings in a Backpack
Thank you for attending the Fr. Ted Said Speaker Series during the Notre Dame Reunion. We hope you enjoyed Erin’s speech and learning more about Blessings in a Backpack. We ask you to join us in our work to end the weekend hunger gap for kids!
Childhood hunger exists in every zip code in the United States; more than 9 million children are food insecure. That’s ONE in EIGHT kids who eat meals at school during the week but are without affordable, healthy food on Saturday and Sunday. The consequences are much more than a growling stomach. Hunger can cause many physical health problems, shorten a child’s attention span, lower their IQ, and keep them from making good grades.
Who will feed the kids this weekend?
The Fighting Irish will!
About Blessings in a Backpack CEO Erin Kerr:
In January 2023, the Alumni Association presented Erin, class of 2001, the William D. Reynolds Award because of her commitment to providing school-aged children in America the nourishment they need to learn and grow. Above, she is pictured with Bob Cronin and Dolly Duffy of the Notre Dame Alumni Association.
In December 2022, she traveled to Jacksonville, Florida, for the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl to cheer on the Fighting Irish. While there, Erin had the opportunity to attend the football team’s community service project — Blessings in a Backpack! Here she is pictured with Benjamin Morrison and her husband Ross, class of 2000. Click here to read how Notre Dame packed food for First Coast kids.
School families and parishioners volunteer after mass to pack bags of food for a neighboring school.
Your Church Parish
Blessings in a Backpack offers your local parish a way to feed kids in your community by hosting a food drive, “adopting” a school, or raising funds to support a local, active school. This can also include community-building volunteer and packing opportunities, an excellent service opportunity for parishioners of all ages.
In Louisville, Kentucky, the Holy Spirit Church community is committed to easing childhood hunger close to home and beyond. School families and parishioners volunteer every other Sunday after mass to bag food for 80 children at a local elementary school. They also raise funds to feed 100 children at Cordia School in Hazard, Kentucky, three hours away in the Appalachian Mountains.
“[Blessings in a Backpack] is a simple way to make a real difference,” said Jane Hertzman, administrative assistant to the pastor. Father Frederick W. Klotter, the pastor, had been looking for a way for the parish and school to collaborate on an outreach program.
Alphonsus Academy students pack food for local kids. Parent volunteers deliver the food to schools.
Your Catholic School
Blessings works with Catholic schools – elementary and high school – across the country to offer students a meaningful service opportunity while also feeding kids at another local school. Blessings offers simple tools to communicate the opportunity to your school and start/support the program.
Alphonsus Academy and Center for the Arts, a large Catholic elementary school in Chicago, partners with two local elementary schools to feed 75 kids. Line items are purchased from Sysco and delivered to the school. Packing happens once a month with younger children paired with older students. Parent volunteers deliver the food to the neighboring schools in the area.
Blessings in a Backpack fit the school’s goal of providing meaningful service opportunities for the students. “It’s an active way of living out their Catholic faith, and hopefully it will make a lasting impression,” a school representative shared.” We want [the students] to be involved in doing service for many years to come.”
Host a packing event like the one pictured, or get involved in other ways to help us feed the kids this weekend!
Your Employer
Blessings in a Backpack offers many ways for businesses to get involved in our work, including engaging their employees through team-building activities. Support our work across the country, feed kids in your own back yard as a school investor, host a packing event for your employees, or rally your team to participate in its own “DIY 5K” event.
Our friends at Discover have partnered with Blessings in a Backpack for many years, supporting our work to provide weekend food for school-aged children who might otherwise go hungry. Last school year, they helped us feed 1,570 children at six schools nationwide!
“We believe everyone should have access to a bright future. This starts in the classroom by empowering our youth and making sure they are prepared to learn,” said Alyse Perkowitz, manager, community affairs, at Discover. “Partnering with Blessings in a Backpack not only provides our employees a way to give back to their local communities, but provides children with access to nutritional food, fueling their bodies and allowing them to all that school has to offer.”
Invite your friends to get involved, much like our friends, the Notre Dame football team, who volunteered with Blessings before their bowl game!
Your Friends
Volunteer together to start or support a Blessings program in your backyard or host a food drive. Host a Facebook fundraiser to help a Blessings program in your community and ask your friends to participate. The possibilities are endless!
Best friends Margaret Johnson and Sharon Braddy-McKoy thought they should do something to ensure kids had food on the weekends. “We were talking about what we would do if we didn’t work — what would be our joy work?” said Margaret. “We thought maybe we would shop and put bags of food in the back of our car and drive around neighborhoods handing out food.”
Sharon later heard about an organization that would allow her and Margaret to do “joy work” while continuing their 9-5 jobs: Blessings in a Backpack. The two identified a school in Las Vegas, where they live, and are feeding over 80 children each week. Ordering prepacks through one of the national food vendors allowed them to provide food to the kids right away.
There are many ways to support the Blessings mission, including donating to help buy food or writing inspiration note cards for kids’ backpacks, like the picture above.
And personally, we ask you to consider:
- Donate to Blessings in a Backpack.
- Create inspirational notecards to go in Blessings bags.
- Sign up for our monthly newsletter and stay updated on our work.
- Get social with us! Be an advocate for Blessings in a Backpack and help spread the word by following us on the social channels below:
Volunteer Melissa Arch received a “thank you” note from a child in her program, which inspired her to include handwritten notes in every Blessings in a Backpack bag. “You know, you might think this is nothing. It’s just words on a piece of paper. But to these children, it means a huge amount because they’re getting inspired by someone who doesn’t know them,” she said.