Weekend event at WWU will feed hungry children

Current, prospective students think of others

Katie Turner, Tessa Hance and Cameron Baker participate in the Buddy Pack stuffing party.
Katie Turner, Tessa Hance and Cameron Baker participate in the Buddy Pack stuffing party.

Part of the culture at William Woods University in Fulton is college students helping younger students, and passing that ideal along through the years, according to Mary Ann Beahon, director of university relations.

Recently, current students joined with students who will attend WWU in the fall to bag up food items. These items will be stuffed into backpacks for children served by the Buddy Pack program administered by the Food Bank of Central and Northeast Missouri, Beahon added.

“The (WWU) students seem to have a special connection to that project, as it’s for schoolchildren,” Beahon said of the activity. “This one, with stuffing the bags, is something they did last year for sure.”

Current and prospective WWU students attended the Buddy Pack food-stuffing party at the university’s Aldridge Lounge last weekend during Woods 101. This event helped familiarize students with the campus and activities there, according to Beahon.

Food for the Buddy Pack program was provided by the food bank, headquartered in Columbia, which will coordinate its distribution to public school students. The food bank had food delivered to the event in trucks.

“There were boxes on top of boxes on top of boxes,” Beahon said of the delivery.

Students broke the large containers of food into smaller, kid-sized portions. These portions will be delivered to the schools, inserted into the Buddy Packs, and then given to students who receive free- or reduced-priced school meals, according to Janese Silvey, communications coordinator for the food bank.

“We work with 156 public schools, mostly elementary schools, in our 32-county area,” Silvey said. “We distribute 7,500 Buddy Packs every weekend during the school year.”

Students served by the program can take their packs home over the weekend or holiday periods to supplement their meals so they are not at risk of hunger on weekends, Silvey added. Volunteers at the schools refill the packs every week for the following weekend.

In Callaway County, about 2,300 — nearly 50 percent — of public schoolchildren are on free- or reduced-price school meals and have little or no food at home, Beahon said. That number goes higher regionally, Silvey said.

“Fifty-two percent of the children in our service area qualify for free- or reduced-price school meals,” Silvey added. “Last year, we distributed 30 million pounds of food.”

Fraternity and sorority members who organized the WWU event said they thought this was a great way to get extra help stuffing more packs and also showing incoming students what a difference Greek life can make in the world.