Blessings in a Backpack addresses student food insecurity

During the recent celebration Nemours Children’s Hospital’s10th anniversary, the hospital announced its partnership with Blessings in a Backpack, a local nonprofit organization committed to reducing the food gap for school-aged children in Central Florida.

The partnership between Nemours and Blessings in a Backpack is designed to ensure students enrolled in the free-lunch program will have nutritious foods on the weekends and during holiday breaks.

Volunteers from Nemours spent a recent morning at Boggy Creek Elementary packing food for children to take home during the long Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend.

This initiative is one example of how Nemours Children’s Health goes “Well Beyond Medicine” and expanding initiatives outside the hospital walls to improve health and address disparities in the communities Nemours serves.

“Nemours Children’s Health is proud to expand our partnership with Blessings in a Backpack to be able to address a critical need for students in our area,” said Martha McGill, Senior Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer, Nemours Children’s Hospital, Florida. “Food insecurity is one of the most important factors that can impact a child’s health. We hope by expanding our partnership with Blessings in a Backpack that more children will have better opportunities to enhance their health.”

There are nine million children experiencing food insecurity in the United States, according to Blessings in a Backpack — or one in eight children. Between Orange, Osceola and Seminole County alone, approximately about 72 percent of students are part of the free and reduced-price school meal program.

“It’s estimated that one in every five children in Central Florida leaves school on a Friday afternoon and doesn’t have food again until they return to school on Monday morning, so we fill that 65-hour weekend meal gap to make sure that kids have the nutrition that they need so that they can show up to school Monday morning nourished and ready to learn,” said Sarah Carlson, Managing Director, Blessings in a Backpack.

“As educators, we know very well that kids cannot learn if their tummies are not full,” said Boggy Creek Elementary Principal Yara Tavarez de la Fuentes.“They’re not going to be in the mind space to be able to pay attention to fractions and literature, so it’s important to me that once we take care of those logistical things, we can get to work.”