Latrobe Rotary Club battling hunger in own backyard

Volunteers from the Latrobe Rotary Club open crinkling plastic Giant Eagle bags, stuffing one of each different packaged food from their colorful organized rows.

The bags full of food such as macaroni and cheese, chocolate milk and applesauce were then zipped up into beige backpacks each with a number corresponding to a child at Latrobe Elementary School.

The Backpack Bag-of-Food program will provide backpacks to 48 children at the school for weekend meals in homes that experience food insufficiency.

Rotary member Jerry Supko, who is leading the program, said he had wanted to start the program for a few years, then heard of the Norwin Rotary Club taking on something similar.

“I'm really excited it's working out the way it is,” Supko said. “Everything is falling into place.”

The first backpacks went home with students ages 5 to 12 on Friday and will last 30 weeks throughout the school year at Latrobe Elementary School, where the district determined there was the most need.

“This is truly more than generous for the community,” said Susan Zedick, guidance counselor at the school, describing how the students reacted with surprise and beaming smiles to the bulging backpacks. “The whole thing just makes (the students) feel good.”

The backpacks are given discreetly, but much appreciated by children participating in a pilot program since January, who even told her about favorite foods like ravioli, she said.

Supko said he chose enough food to make up meals for dinner on Friday, then three meals Saturdays and Sundays.

For some families, Zedick said the food may be a supplement to other meals, even stretching through the week.

He partnered with Giant Eagle in Unity, which has granted a 5 percent discount for the program and use of the former Eagle's Nest space inside the store to pack the backpacks every week.

“I walked up and down the aisles and thought ‘this is microwavable,' stuff that the kids for the most part can do themselves. It's all single-serving,” Supko said, adding that 5- to 9-year-olds get a few smaller portions than the 10- to 12-year-olds.

Grabbing cups of soup and Jell-O for the bags, Denise Martin said she wanted to work with the program because she has children of her own.

“It just breaks my heart to think that any child could go hungry,” said Martin, director of membership with the Greater Latrobe-Laurel Valley Chamber of Commerce.

After the bags were full, she handed them to Janice Roskey, overseeing grocery carts full of the backpacks, who echoed a similar reason for volunteering.

“I just think nobody should go hungry,” she said. “I don't think you should wake up in the morning and go hungry.”

After administrators were approached, the program started in January with 34 students, then 20 during the summer. When the school year started, information was sent home and parents were able to sign up their families, said Susan Zedick, guidance counselor at the school.

“I think it's better when somebody recognizes they have a need, rather than us making an assumption, then we're making a judgment and I don't want to do that,” Zedick said.

Rotary member Sean Kunkle said people in the Latrobe area need help as much as any other community. “It's hard to think that in the community we live in, there would be people that would need food in this day and age, but they do and it's good to be able to help them out,” he said.

Supko has budgeted $15 per child per week, which, including care and replacement of the backpacks, will cost about $18,000 per year.

When the program first began, the Latrobe Rotary Club donated funds to get it started, but now Supko hopes to get sponsors and donations after partnering with the Latrobe Foundation.

“All the money that we're raising for this goes right here, right back into food to continue the program,” he said.

With enough funding, Supko said he would eventually like to expand the program to help those in need at Greater Latrobe's Baggaley and Mountain View Elementary schools as well as Derry Area schools.

“If you're going to donate to anything, you should help kids in your own hometown,” he said.

Stacey Federoff is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. She can be reached at 724-836-6660 or sfederoff@tribweb.com.