OSWEGO – The Blessings in a Backpack program in Oswego has received a $1,500 grant from Stewart’s Shops in support of the community organization’s work feeding needy children in Oswego schools over weekends and school breaks.
The grant comes from Stewart’s Holiday Match program, in which the business collects and matches donations from its customers from Thanksgiving to Christmas each year.
“Many people in our community generously pitched in to feed the hungry bellies in our schools while shopping at Stewart’s during the holidays,” said program coordinator Melissa Russell of the Church of the Resurrection.
The Episcopal church at West Fifth and Cayuga streets is the lead sponsor of Blessings in a Backpack in Oswego. Key partners include Grace Lutheran Church and Faith United Church.
This is the third year that Stewart’s has dedicated funds from its Holiday Match program to the Oswego BiB program. “This grant is the kind of support that has allowed our program to continue to grow and feed more of the hungry children in our schools, ” Russell said.
Oswego’s Blessings in a Backpack program has expanded to provide food to more and more children locally, from 25 when it began six years ago to 300 this year.
The Oswego program joined recently with its counterpart in Fulton to “Blast Hunger” at the Oswego Elks Lodge in the programs’ largest annual fundraiser, raising nearly $5,000. The next major fundraiser for Oswego’s BiB program will be a chicken barbecue in June.
Blessings in a Backpack is a national organization with a mission of helping to end childhood hunger. Each week, shelf-stable, easy-to-prepare food is sent home to students who are on the free or reduced-price lunch program.
It costs the Oswego program about $80 to feed one student during weekends and school breaks throughout the 2018-19 school year — currently $2.11 per week.
For more information about Blessings in a Backpack in Oswego, see resoswego.org/missions-ministries.
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