The Mason County Retired Senior Volunteer Program will soon become a permanent drop-off location for the Mason County Schools backpack program.
Angela Turner, Mason County RSVP director, said the center will begin collecting items for the backpack program on Monday.
According to Turner, items that are needed include, but are not limited to, puddings, Jell-O, cookie snack packs, snack mix, cereal, chips and other items.
Turner said some items, such as granola bars, cannot be accepted because they contain nuts.
“This program aids in feeding around 200 students districtwide throughout the weekends. The donations that we seek are individually packaged snack items that do not contain nuts and that are not processed in a factory with nuts,” she said.
However, she does have a backup plan if such items are donated.
“If we receive something that can’t go to the backpack program, we can send it to the food bank,” she said. “So, it won’t go to waste.”
Turner said the RSVP chose to become a drop off location in order to help the school district.
“We want to be more involved with the backpack program,” she said. “It helps our community and it helps them.”
RSVP is located in the welcome center off the Simon Kenton Bridge.
Food insecurity is described as “the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food.”
And while a state of hunger may most often be associated with life in a third-world country, that is not always the case. Sometimes it applies to those who live in our own communities.
According to Feeding America, a non profit nationwide network of food banks, one in six children in the United States may not know where they will get their next meal.
Area food banks help by providing groceries to stretch food dollars. And many school districts offer or work with other agencies on a backpack program which discreetly sends food home with children for weekends and holidays when school cafeterias are closed, providing students with nutritious and easily prepared food items when school meals are not available.
Item drop off will begin on Monday at 10 a.m. Items will be collected during business hours Monday through Friday between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.
Mason County Schools Superintendent Rick Ross said he was very appreciative of the efforts.
“Every year, we have more and more students who are relying on that program,” he said. “We appreciate the RSVP organization doing this; and we appreciate all of the community efforts to assist with that program.”
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