Every Friday morning during the school year, almost 100 students gather at Lambert High School in Suwanee, GA, to fill backpacks full of food for students throughout the county who need food assistance. National Honor Society (NHS) officers arrive at 7 a.m. to prepare for more than 100 volunteers who pack 530 individual bags of food for families experiencing food insecurity. Volunteers start packing at 7:30 and finish by 8:15.
Then other volunteers—parents and some of our 12thgraders—deliver the backpacks to 20 schools, mostly elementary, so the students can pick up their food before 11. At a minimum, we pack enough food for two kid-friendly, satisfying, and nutritious dinners, two breakfast items, two snacks and a fruit cup. By the time we’re done, we’ve fed more than 530 students every weekend for 38 weeks during the school year.
The effort is part of Blessings in a Backpack, a national program that helps to provide school-age children with food on the weekends. I manage the only Blessings chapter at our school. I also happen to be the NHS adviser, and I help the two programs work hand in hand. Ours is a large school, with about 3,200 students, and we have almost 600 NHS members. About 200 students participate in Blessings throughout the year. There is a lot of overlap intentionally between the two, including among the officers.
As with many NHS chapters, our students also volunteer at local food banks. But with the weekly commitment and the hands-on involvement in running the program—along with the fundraising—Blessings gives our students an invaluable experience.
Ours is an affluent community, and the students tend to live in a bubble in some ways. But once they get involved in the program, they see the food insecurity in other parts of the county. When the program began 10 years ago, it served 50 children. In the three years since I’ve directed the chapter, our numbers have grown from 250 to well over 530. I estimate that more than 2,000 students in our county could use our help if we could provide it.
The students who participate are passionate about the program, and they grow more than they realize in the moment. It’s rewarding to develop these young leaders and watch them give back to the community.
Student leaders also gain valuable administrative experience. The officers write grants to raise money. They also hold fundraisers and work with local businesses. Last year, we tried something new by partnering with another nonprofit to put on a circus—yes, an actual circus. We rented out the county fairgrounds and brought in circus performers for two days and sold tickets for the show. That took a lot of volunteers, but it was a big success, and we’re planning to do it again this year.
With the number of kids we feed, we’ve learned to be very frugal. When the students go out to buy supplies, they pinch pennies. Even then, it takes almost $100,000 to feed the students during the year.
Our NHS chapter requires members to complete a minimum of 30 volunteer hours per year. However, to put that in perspective, the students in Blessings easily put in well over 100 hours each. It’s wonderful to see the freshmen and sophomores so heavily committed to community service before they are even eligible for NHS. They have no actual volunteer requirement; they just want to be involved.
For NHS advisers considering pursuing something like this, it really is a long-term commitment and a lot of work. I think I’m one of the only, if not the only, NHS adviser who also runs a Blessings in a Backpack chapter. When other advisers ask me about it, I suggest working with our chapter, or another existing chapter, rather than trying to start their own program from scratch. My advice is to start small.
Either way, everything becomes a lot easier with good officers. I suggest talking to middle school teachers about who might be good, caring leaders and start recruiting them early in high school. With capable officers, their friends show up, and then their friends’ friends show up and the network grows.
Running a Blessings chapter and advising NHS has been one of the most fulfilling parts of my 20-year teaching career. I also have more than a decade of business-world experience. This program is the highlight of my week. When the food goes out of the building on Friday, on its way to kids who need it, that’s a great feeling to make a difference every weekend.
