SASD COMMUNITY HELPING HANDS AWARD
2008 Winner
Sioux Falls School District & Community Food Banks of South Dakota

Community Helping Hands Award recognizes a school district and their non-school community partner for their outstanding collaboration in implementing a successful program, project or activity that has generated significant local community involvement and positively impacted the education of children.

Imagine going home after school on a Friday night and knowing that your next meal may not be until you returned to school on Monday morning.  This was the reality for hundreds of students in the Sioux Falls School District until the Backpack Program began.  Each Friday afternoon, 1,155 students in ten elementary schools and three middle schools pick up a backpack or a bag of food to meet their nutritional needs through the weekend.

This program wouldn't exist without the generous support of citizens and organizations across Sioux Falls and the donation of time from our community.  On Wednesday evenings, volunteers arrive at the Food Bank of South Dakota to pack bags
with food for the students.  A person-to-person assembly line is begun to pack the over 1,000 bags of food.  These are then distributed to the schools on Thursday for distribution to students on Friday.

This program began during the 2005-2006 school year in a few pilot schools, serving only a few hundred students and has expanded to over 1,000 students.  Each Monday, the backpacks return to school so that they are available for the next week and our students return to school, ready to learn because their nutritional needs have been met through the weekend.