Look In Your Own Backyard

Sometimes you find the hungry in your own neighborhood. In doing a canned food drive at the dance studio where I am co-owner, I found out that the Tarrant Area Food Bank has a program called Backpacks for Kids. This program packs kid friendly snacks in backpacks and distributes them to 12 sites in 3 counties. The schools are chosen if 80% or more of their kids are eligible for free or reduced-cost meals. Nine of the schools are in Tarrant County. (You can find this information on the food bank’s website.) The backpacks are distributed to a child for the weekend and then returned to the school on Monday. They make sure that the backpacks are distributed in private to save the children from being embarrassed. Sometimes I think we get so caught up in the plight of people in foreign countries that we forget that we have people with needs in our own.