Lincoln East High School's home of Spartan news

The Oracle

Lincoln East High School's home of Spartan news

The Oracle

Lincoln East High School's home of Spartan news

The Oracle

The BackPack Program

The BackPack Program

The BackPack program was started at Clinton Elementary School during the 2004 school year. Every Friday, backpacks were sent with 50 children with enough non perishable food items to get them through the weekend, when they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to. Today, over 2,291 students get backpacks on every Friday at 32 LPS schools and 28 rural communities outside of the LPS district. However, this comes with a high price. Per student, it costs $250 to receive a backpack for a year. Multiply that by 2,291 and the price comes to around $572,750 to feed the kids in the program. Already this year the BackPack program has provided over 183,280 meals.

Sadly, the need for this program keeps growing every year. Of the 7,826 students that qualify for free and reduced lunch, 5,535 do not receive backpacks. What is even worse is the 2015 Vital Signs report revealing that Lincoln, Nebraska has a higher rate of poverty than the United States as a whole, and a higher rate of children in poverty as well.

The BackPack program has two major goals. The first is raising money for the hungry children in our community, and the second is educating our community about the needs of the children at LPS. People from around our community can volunteer every Friday to go to elementary schools to fill and hand out backpacks to students.

“It is the best part of my week, I look forward to seeing the looks on those kids’ faces when they receive their food. It really puts things into perspective for me and makes me realize just how lucky I am to have everything that I do. Because I am not teaching anymore, I don’t get to have as much of an impact in children’s lives, and the opportunity to hand out and stuff backpacks gives that back to me and is very rewarding. I hope to keep doing this for a long time. We all must do everything we can to help the younger generations because this world will be theirs soon, and we need to teach them the importance of giving and helping others,” says Linda Dockery who stuffs backpacks every Friday at Eliot Elementary School in Lincoln.

One event that helps raise money for the BackPack program, besides the donations at schools, is the BackPack Extra Mile Walk. The walk was started in 2008, and has raised over $1.3 million since then. This year’s BackPack walk will be held (rain or shine) on April 29, 2017 at Lincoln East High School. It is a fantastic way to get some exercise for a good cause. The walk will start in the gym with games, food and dancing, and then the captains will take their groups out and begin the approximately 1 mile walk around the Lincoln East Campus. The BackPack walk has been and will continue to be a wonderful tradition in the city of Lincoln, as we work together to combat hunger and poverty in our community.

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