Boca Helping Hands Partners with Six Public Schools to Provide Weekend Food to Kids

(L-R) Jacqueline Martin, Heather Roman, Meghan Shea, Renata Wozniak, Kerri Crowell and Tina Kelly.

Boca Helping Hands (BHH) has partnered with six public schools to provide food-insecure elementary students with weekend meals for the remainder of the school year. The BHH Backpacks Program will ensure that 348 children stay fed when they head home on Fridays, with additional schools potentially joining later in the year.

(front to back) Heather Roman, Kerri Crowell and Renata Wozniak

During the pandemic, instead of receiving backpacks full of food at the end of each week and returning empty backpacks the following week to fill again, each child now brings home a “backpack in a box” each Friday filled with six meals, three snacks, two juice boxes, and two shelf-stable milks. The currently participating schools are located in Boca Raton, Delray Beach and Boynton Beach.

(clockwise from bottom left) Heather Roman, Renata Wozniak and Tina Kelly

“Without this help, these children might not have enough to eat over the weekend. We’re pleased to be able to provide these meals,” said Greg Hazle, Executive Director of Boca Helping Hands.

(left to right) Jacqueline Martin and Heather Roman

When schools closed in the spring due to the COVID-19 outbreak, Boca Helping Hands provided its remaining Backpack food for the 2019-2020 school year to the Achievement Centers for Children and Families and Boys and Girls Club of Boca Raton so that that the kids in those programs would continue to have food over the weekend. Those meal distributions continued over the summer.