VOLUNTEER SERVICE PROJECTS

Blessings in a Backpack
Sony Open in Hawaii
By: Kate Rose

Aloha! On the Wednesday of the first full event of 2010, 20 members of the PGA TOUR Wives Association and their children kicked off our 2010 charity visit schedule by going to Ke Kula 'o Samuel M. Kamakau Lab PCS school in O'ahu, for the official launch of our "Blessings in a Backpack" program. Last year, the PTWA partnered with Sammy Hagar, Friends of Hawaii Charities, The Mark and Debi Rolfing Charitable Foundation and Foodland Super Market, with the goal of coming together to provide nutritious foods for children over the weekends, under the "Blessings in a Backpack" format. The Blessings program was founded 5 years ago by Stan Curtis, with three schools in Kentucky, and has now grown to serve over 24,000 children in over a hundred schools in 16 states! 

Blessings in a Backpack is a non-profit organization designed to provide weekend nourishment to elementary school children who qualify for free or reduced fee meals under the National School Lunch Program. School children who receive free and reduced meal plans eat while they are in school, but go home to little or no food in the evenings and on weekends. These children return to school on Monday hungry and tired. 

Through the “Blessings in a Backpack” initiative, these undernourished school children are given food for the weekends. Participating schools have seen a dramatic increase in their test scores, a reduced number of school nurse visits on Monday, increased attendance and better attention and focus in the classroom where these children are served. 

The PGA TOUR Wives Association, along with our partners, has made a commitment to feed these children over the weekends for the next three years. 

We discovered during our visit that, due to school budget cuts, some of the schools were having to close on Fridays, thereby reducing the school week and school feeding program to only 4 days a week. In addition to this, the recent economic crisis meant that many parents had lost their jobs, so they were finding it increasingly difficult to afford this extra day of feeding their children. This makes the need for this program even more critical for these children.

We have been quietly running this Blessings pilot for the past 6 months, and it was a thrill to attend our press launch of it during the week of the Sony Open in Hawaii, and get to meet some of the recipient children. Since the fall of 2009, 373 children from three schools in Hawaii were the first recipients of the "blessings" in a backpack. We were greeted with their local song, beautifully sung in the revived Hawaiian language, which welcomed us into their family, and every single child came and hugged or kissed all of us. It was truly a special day. Our goal is to eventually expand this program to feed more of Hawaii’s keiki.  We hope that through the 2010 Sony Open in Hawaii, individuals and companies will learn about this program.  You can add your support by making a donation to Friends of Hawaii Charities, designee: Blessings in a Backpack. Visit www.friendsofhawaii.org.

We look forward to continuing our partnership with "Blessings in a Backpack" during the Waste Management Phoenix Open at the end of February, where we will be launching another program!

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To see Volunteer Service Projects from past years, go to Archives.