Backpack Buddies is a program run throughout the country by individual churches and groups using several program names.
Heritage Baptist Church in Annapolis works with Georgetown East Elementary School providing ready-to-eat or easy-to-prepare in a microwave food for children identified by the school as benefiting from supplemental food on weekends and school holidays. These children are already on the free or reduced meal program and the interaction with the children is only done by the school.
Currently, Heritage Baptist's program provides 23 backpacks.
Plastic grocery bags filled with nutritional, easy-to-prepare or ready-to-eat foods are delivered to the school each week.
The school places these bags into the backpacks (also supplied by the church) and the children take them home on Friday afternoons, returning them to the school on Mondays.
Food donations come from Food Link, Anne Arundel Food Bank, the congregation, and the Heritage Learning Center. With financial donations from The Heritage Baptist congregation, long shelf life milk is purchased from the Maryland Food Bank.
