By Benjamin Bullard
The Cullman Times
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School lunches are, for some elementary school students, the best opportunity for healthy eating they have each day during the school year. When the five-day school week ends and the weekend begins, the diets of many kids from low-income families can lapse into a pattern of unhealthy eating because of conditions or family patterns at home.
A new program in Cullman aims to remedy that. The Secret Meals program, a joint campaign between Alabama Credit Union and the North Alabama Food Bank, is among a growing category of school nutrition charities nationwide referred to as “backpack” programs.
Backpack programs implement their mission by working with school counselors to arrange for healthy foods to be given to selected students anonymously: when elementary-age kids are out of their classrooms at recess on a Friday, school personnel take that opportunity to slip a healthy mix of food into their backpacks, giving them a weekend’s worth of good nutrition.
While the local program is new to Cullman, it has seen success in other areas where the credit union has implemented it, according to Brady Wakefield, a supervisor at the credit union’s Cullman branch.
Because the program is new to the area, most eligible Cullman County children will not see food in their backpacks until the 2011-2012 school year. Credit Union officials and organizers at the non-profit North Alabama Food Bank are hoping to spread the word now, so that monetary donations can be in place to fully implement the program when the next school year rolls around.
Richard Hartz, agency coordinator for the Huntsville-based chapter of the Food Bank, said backpack programs have been successful in other parts of the country, and—based on the track record of charitable activity in Cullman County—should do well here.
“About 10 years ago, one of the local food banks in Arkansas started the “backpack” program,” said Hartz. “The idea was to give children food in their backpacks that they could take home for the weekend that would serve their nutritional needs. It has been really successful, and it’s really spread very quickly to other areas.”
Credit union member services representative Melissa Culwell said the Cullman iteration of Secret Meals sprang from the success the program has seen over the past two years in Tuscaloosa, where it was first launched.
“It started there, and they just got such a good response to it,” she said. “It’s something we just began here, around the first of August, and we’ve gotten really positive feedback. The way it works, the teachers get a list of [students’] names to school counselors, and a request for food for those students goes out to the food bank. Then, the [food] packets are slid into their backpacks while they’re at recess on Friday afternoons.”
Because of the unique nutritional needs the program fulfills, and because of existing arrangements with food suppliers who have agreed to provide specially-packaged food items that fit the program’s requirements, Secret Meals accepts only financial donations.
If you’re interested in making a donation to Secret Meals, Culwell says it’s as simple as coming by the Cullman branch—located at 1901 Main Avenue Southwest just south of Heritage Park—and making out a check to the North Alabama Food Bank. The money will go toward the resource pool that funds ongoing Secret Meals programs in north Alabama, and will finance the Cullman County implementation of the program as it comes online.
* Benjamin Bullard can be reached by e-mail at bbullard@cullmantimes.com or by telephone at 734-2131 ext. 270.
