15 Nov T&B Planning Supports United Way’s Kids Pack Challenge

As part of the community support initiatives that our team participates in, T&B Planning was proud to be represented by our own Tracy Chu, Assistant Project Manager, at a recent Kids Pack event hosted by United Way of Inland Empire. Tracy was one of the volunteers brought together by NAIOP – Commercial Real Estate Development Association. 

Kids Pack is a collaboration that addresses food insecurity for homeless and underprivileged school-aged children who rely on free school meals as their major source of nutrition during the week, but have little or no access to meals on the weekends. At capacity, Kids Pack serves 2,000 hungry children each week, providing food bags distributed across 12 school districts. By addressing food insecurity, Kids Pack ensures that underprivileged children are able to focus on school work and not an empty stomach, can participate and be more attentive in class, and have the chance to break the cycle of poverty. “It’s exciting to participate in an initiative designed to ensure that underprivileged children have the resources they need to engage in school, learn, and succeed,” explained Chu. 

Kids Pack delivers weekly food bags to 2,000 children identified by their schools as in need of food during the weekends when free school meals are not available. During the school year, hundreds of volunteers assemble the 2,000 weekly Kids Packs, which are then discretely distributed to students in backpacks at their schools. This decreases the stigma that students face around food insecurity while ensuring that they receive nutritious food for the weekend. The backpacks are returned, refilled, and redistributed again the following week.

Although Kids Pack is simply a backpack full of nutritious snacks delivered each weekend, for these homeless and underprivileged students, it can make the difference between failure and success. We know that when a child is hungry, focusing on their class work is much more difficult, and keeping up with fellow students who are adequately nourished becomes very challenging. Kids Pack is an effective strategy not only for ensuring that underprivileged students have enough to eat each weekend, but also to ensure they can excel academically and begin reaching for a brighter future. Within the 93 schools served in 12 districts, 92% of teachers report that Kids Pack has a positive impact on their students, 84% of teachers say that Kids Pack specifically helped improve their students’ academic performance, and 80% of parents say that they worry less about feeding their child over the weekend because of Kids Pack.