Schreffler & Volunteers stuff a little love into D21 Backpack Program
Glenis Schreffler and volunteers pack a little love in every Backpack that goes home with students on weekend. The Bags are also filled with food for the student and their family for the weekend as some 150 families are experiencing food insecurity.
Preparing Kids for Sucess one bag at a time
Editor’s Note - Stephanie Bowen brings us an excellent piece on the hundreds of volunteers that are making our community a better place to live for local students. Do you have or know of a similar story and want to write about it? Let us know. We want to share it.
From North Wasco County School District:
By Stephanie Bowen
There are a lot of things you can put in a backpack.
Just ask Glenis Schreffler and her crew of volunteers who stuff bags to offer D21 students and families free groceries for weekends, including healthy, easy-to-prepare food for kid-friendly meals.
But the most important ingredient?
That would have to be the love from knowing they're preparing our local kids for success.
Well-nourished students are better prepared to learn. Learning and success in the classroom is a key indicator of future success as adults.
The Backpack Program, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary in April, gets a huge effort from Glenis and the crew.
What you may not know is the dozens of helping hands and the sheer mass of coordination that goes on behind the closed doors of the pantry, nestled in the basement of the United Methodist Church.
It’s all hands on deck ensuring the kids in our community are all well fed over the weekend.
The pantry is restocked every Tuesday afternoon, a feat all in itself. While the Backpack Program partners with Columbia Gorge Food Bank to get food at a discounted rate, it's up to Glenis and her crew of dedicated volunteers to get it to the Backpack pantry, Trucks and cars are filled to the brim with canned goods, soups, boxed foods and bread.
Back at the pantry, another crew of volunteers fills bags in a carefully choreographed dance of assembly.
“We have a system, we pack two breakfasts, two lunches, and two dinners,” Glenis said. “We also like make sure they each have two fresh items.”
With ten years of experience under their belt, the team moves like a well-oiled machine.
The Backpack Program has a symbiotic relationship with our local schools. The program is dedicated to providing healthy meals to students who may be struggling with food insecurity. And hungry or malnourished students don’t make good learners. On the other hand, those youths and families using the Backpack Program have a much better chance of being ready and eager to learn come Monday morning.
On Friday, March 25th, the pantry hums to life yet again with the impending delivery to the schools of the week's food bags, ready to head home for the weekend.
I arrived today just in time; the large North Wasco County School District courier truck is parked in the alley with its bay door open. The D21 courier is there, ready and waiting to help load. Glenis and Dottie Ray, D21’s Director of Nutrition, are inside, carefully counting bags and then shuffling them to the truck. By the end, the truck is filled with bags, and there are still more on the shelves waiting.
D21 Courier, helping load bags to deliver to schools.
Not long after the truck pulls out, a school counselor, Jacob Abrams, pops in; he’s there to get his allotment to take back to Dry Hollow Elementary. The school counselors are another vital player in the Backpack Program. Often, they are the ones promoting the program to students and coordinating numbers back to Glenis and her crew. They also help pick up bags and coordinate distribution at each of the schools.
But things don’t always go off without a hitch; life has a way of throwing a wrench in even the most well-oiled of machines. Case in point is the extended week of no school following Winter Break thanks to January’s heavy snowfall. No school usually means no Backpack Program since students aren’t there to receive their bags.
“It was Wednesday, that week that I got a call from Sylvia Ashmore,” Glenis recalled of her conversation with one of the Backpack Program’s most dedicated volunteers. “She had been talking with Jodi Ketchum over at Colonel Wright, and she said, it’s been three weeks (since the last distribution). We’ve got to do something,”
What happened next was an incredible display of the old adage “team work makes the dream work.” Volunteers from both the Backpack Program and the School District, including Ashmore, Ketchum, Ray and District CFO, Kara Flath quickly answered the cry for help.
The crew was able to pack and then deliver 90+ bags of food, door by door, to snowed-in students - a welcome surprise for many snow weary families.
Daunting? Not for these volunteers who have been filling bags for a decade to give students meals during weekends and school breaks.
Without a doubt, the Backpack Program has been incredibly impactful. What started with the delivery of just 14 food bags at The Dalles High School has grown to encompass every D21 school and fills over 150 bags of food a week. Thousands of pounds of food pass through the door each month.
It is an incredible show of dedication, teamwork, and community support for the sake of students and families across the district.
“We don’t turn anybody down. We’re doing what we are supposed to be doing,” Glenis said.
Want to get involved?
Donations of individually wrapped cracker sleeves (like Ritz), ramen, granola bars and individually wrapped snacks are the highest need as these items are not available via the Food Bank. There is a dropbox in the alley behind the First United Methodist Church at 305 E. 11th St, The Dalles.
Volunteers are in the pantry Tuesday afternoons from 1:30-2:30 p.m. and Thursday mornings from 9:30-11:30 a.m. if you would like to drop-off and check out the pantry!
If you would like to donate financially to this program you can drop-off or mail a check to FUMC, Backpack program, 305 E. 11th St, The Dalles, OR 97058.
