Food for Kids is a collaborative effort between Second Harvest and area schools, with the goal of fighting hunger among young children in our 18 County East Tennessee community.
Food for Kids provides backpacks filled with kid-friendly food for elementary aged children to take home after school or on the weekends.
Second Harvest provides each participating school with a supply of new backpacks, along with nutritious, non-perishable food that can easily be prepared by a child.
Teachers identify children in their classroom that are showing signs of hunger. When such symptoms do occur, the teacher places a request with Second Harvest for the child to begin to receive food assistance. The food and backpacks are then delivered to the school, where the teacher is able to hand them out to the children in their class.
Participating students receive a backpack full of food for themselves and, if needed, their younger siblings on a regularly scheduled basis.
Second Harvest operates 171 Food for Kids sites serving 7,816 youth across 18 East Tennessee counties. Most of these sites are Elementary Schools.
Each Food for Kids site costs Second Harvest about $3,500 to operate each year. Opportunities exist for businesses, organizations and individuals to sponsor a school for $2,800 per year. Second Harvest absorbs the remaining $700 cost of distribution. School sponsorships allow us to continue existing Food for Kids programs and grow the program with the addition of new sites. To date, 25 sponsors have adopted schools. With so many active sites, opportunities for sponsorship are still available in all of the counties we serve. Sites and sponsors are listed below.
"Thank you for the backpacks that you give us. The stuff that’s in it is good. I eat everything in them, too. I am glad that you give me the backpack." - Ryan H (a Food for Kids Recipient)
"I can really see a difference in the kids in my class who get a backpack each week. They seem to concentrate better and their behavior has improved. But more than anything, they just seem happier." -Food for Kids Site Coordinator
Click here for our sponsorship proposal.
An individual child may be sponsored for an entire school year with a donation of $100.
Click here for our online child sponsorship form.
Click here for a video and article about Childhood Hunger over the summer months
Click here to email Sam Compton for more information or questions about Food For Kids.
Click here for a Food for Kids Brochure
Scroll down or click the county links below for a list of participating schools and their sponsors or to become a Food For Kids sponsor yourself.
Program Sponsors
- Ameriprise
- East Tennessee Foundation
- Emmet Vaughn
- Gene and Florence Monday Foundation
- Great West Casualty
- Humana Foundation
- Juniper Entertainment
- Mercy Health Partners
- Regal Foundation
- Robert Shipley
- Ronald McDonald House
- Thompson Charitable Foundation
- United Way
- Variety the Childrens Charity
- William Wallace
- Zemeckis Charitable Foundation
Anderson County
Blount County
Campbell County
Claiborne County
Cocke County
Cumberland County
Fentress County
Grainger County
Jefferson County
Hamblen
Knox County
Loudon County
Monroe County
Morgan County
Roane County
Scott County
Sevier County
Union County
