Because of a $1 million grant from Governor John Kasich’s office, a Summer Weekend Backpack Meals program was established this year in the state, including the Middletown area.
The Summer Weekend Backpack Meals program, which runs through Aug. 17, is a partnership between the Governor’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, the Ohio Department of Education, Ohio’s foodbanks, and program sponsors in targeted areas that will support the distribution of meals.
Each backpack contains two pre-packaged breakfast meals, four pre-packaged lunch/dinner meals, one white milk and one chocolate milk.
The program provides a weekend’s worth of meals to more than 10,000 children in Ohio for more than 10 weeks during the summer. In Middletown, the program is serving about 800 children a week, said Maurice Maxwell, executive director of Family Services of Middletown, which offers free meals at 17 Middletown sites.
Maxwell said he scheduled 1,700 meals a week, but the program is falling short of that project because of the heat and lack of administrative financial support. Maxwell said every penny is being used to purchase food.
To gain experience with the program and meet the children who benefit from the meals, State Rep. Tim Derickson (R-Oxford) and representatives from the Governor’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives visited several Middletown sites Friday where children received food packages for the weekend.
After hearing some of the parents talk about the impact of the program, Derickson said it could mean the difference between “life and death.”
Without the program, Oglesby, a single mother of two children, Madison Thomas, 9, and Myles Thomas, 5, isn’t sure how she’d feed her children, especially on weekends. She said she makes sure her children are fed, and if there’s food available in the refrigerator, she eats.
“That’s why this program is so important,” she said.
Nora Balduff, director of child and senior nutrition for the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks, said those who receive assistance from the program have “less stress in their homes” because they’re able to balance their budgets a little easier.
Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2842 or rmccrabb@coxohio.com.
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