Editorial

Picture the humble school backpack and help to fill it

Posted 12/1/22

Word pictures will carry the fund drive.

Visualization will fill backpacks.

Covid thrust the necessity of a virtual pie sale on the community’s Backpack Blessings program in 2020. Since …

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Editorial

Picture the humble school backpack and help to fill it

Posted

Word pictures will carry the fund drive.

Visualization will fill backpacks.

Covid thrust the necessity of a virtual pie sale on the community’s Backpack Blessings program in 2020. Since then, there has not been an actual pie sold to raise funds for the program and its mission to combat food insecurity in elementary school children.   

But that has not stopped the flow of support to Backpack Blessings. And it has not deterred Backpack Blessings from fulfilling its mission. The idea of a “pie sale” goes on.

It has been a triumph of conceptualization. The program’s 2022 fund drive theme of “Better Than Baking” is close to brilliant. No fuss, no fixings, no popping in the oven, no cost to bake a pie.

Yet the community is reminded that it can still symbolically “fill a pie pan” by contributing to the annual Backpack Blessings fund drive. 

To continue the pie sale concept, it takes a lot of “pies” to keep the program going throughout the school year. Picture about $41,000 worth of pies.

When Backpack Blessings debuted in 2011, the program provided weekend meal-packs and snacks to between 60 and 70 elementary schoolers. Today that number has doubled to nearly 140 elementary students every weekend.

The annual fund drive is conducted during the holidays. Last year the community responded to the appeal with more than $10,000 in donations. That’s terrific, but it’s only about a fourth of what it takes to sustain the program through the entire school year.

Individuals, businesses, churches and organizations are there all year long with continuing, tax-deductible donations to this vital effort. Their contributions are magnified by grant applications managed by the Backpack Blessings board.

Another image has been fairly well cemented in the public consciousness: It takes a village. This is everyone’s opportunity to visualize the humble school backpack and help to fill it.  For full details, go to backpackblessingsofpowell.com.

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