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www.BeaconSeniorNews.com
March 2012
Backpack program feeds kids By Brenda Evers
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1,800 students with packs of food per week.” Mike said they are growing because they are getting better at finding money, often in the form of donations and grants. Kids Aid and the Berrys have good reason to be proud of what they have accomplished. It takes a lot of money and people power to keep the backpacks going out each week. Mike estimated that it costs $4 per bag each week—that’s $7,200 per week. Since they deliver 32 weeks of food bags to district 51 schools that’s $23,000 needed per school year. How do they get enough financial support?
ocal businessman Mike Berry, 56, is always smiling when talking about his second job as volunteer CEO, overseeing Kids Aid, the nonprofit organization his family started in Mesa County. Most know it better as the “Backpack program,” where hungry students are provided with backpacks of food donations, so they will have food over the weekend. Even fewer people realize this 9-year-old program was started at a family meeting around the Berry’s dining room table. “One October morning in 2003, my wife and I walked our daughter to her first grade class,” Mike said. “A little girl came running across the playground, crying. We stopped her and asked what was wrong. Her answer pierced our hearts.” “I’m cold,” she said. “I’m hungry.” This one little girl’s plea touched Mike, his wife Debbie and their daughter Kayla’s hearts. But how could they help? After four years of researching and asking questions about Mike and Debbie Berry fill backpacks with food, supporting more childhood hunger than 1,800 school kids in the Grand Valley through Kids Aid. in Mesa County, the “We have survived because of the Berry family came up with a plan. generosity of the community,” Mike Kayla named it Feeding Friends Backsaid. “For every dollar donated by pack program. The Berrys established the nonprof- individuals or organizations, 96 cents goes to the Kids Aid to buy the food, it Kids Aid to run it. They started with a trial program at to deliver the food and to store the food.” Orchard Avenue Elementary. The community has responded “We fed 10 kids for the final 10 weeks of the 2007-2008 school year,” generously to this program. Twentyeight churches have embraced the Mike said. “By the next fall, we had program, at first by donating food five schools and 156 kids. By 2009, and backpacks. As the number of we were in 17 schools and providing 1,260 kids. Today, we provide over students needing backpacks grew,