FAQs

BackPack Beginnings’ Food BackPack Program provides hungry preschool and elementary-aged children with a bag of child-friendly, nutritious food to take home every weekend during the school year. While most children have access to nutritious breakfast and lunch during school, the same cannot be said for weekends. Our Food BackPack Program was developed to help ensure that every child in our program has access to nutritious food over the weekends when not in school. Studies have shown that children who eat nutritious meals over the weekend return to school ready to learn on Monday morning.

BackPack Beginnings’ Food BackPack Program focuses on the children. Our food provided is for the children only, not the adults in the family. If there are siblings in a school, each sibling gets their own bags. All food is child-friendly. We also try to take our program one step further by caring for other needs of the recipient children. While food is the primary focus, we also include books, hats and gloves, hygiene products, and more.

Food bags are distributed on Fridays or the last day of school prior to a holiday. Two bags of food are distributed when the children are out for two weekends (Winter break and Spring break).

Food bags contain child-friendly, nutritious, single-serving, non-perishable items. Every bag contains at least 10 items of food including 2 cereals, 2 shelf-stable milks, 2 100% juices, 2 fruits (or 1 fruit and 1 vegetable) and 2 proteins. Additional food and supply items are added from food and supply drives. We do NOT include peanut products due to allergies.

No, the food bags are intended to feed the child. Providing enough food for the entire family would exceed the safe weight a child should carry in their backpack. To ensure equitability, when more than one sibling in a family is in a school, all siblings from that family are fed.

Only the school administrators and teachers will know. All children are anonymous to BackPack Beginnings’ volunteer staff and volunteers.

No! BackPack Beginnings is a free program for all recipients

Over 92% of all donations go to purchasing the food for the children. BackPack Beginnings is a 95% volunteer-run program with the remaining expenses including administrative costs, utilities, insurance, mailings, printing, etc.

Please click here to see the schools we serve through our Food BackPack Program. If you would like your school to be involved, please contact Parker White at parker@backpackbeginnings.org.

BackPack Beginnings’ Comfort BackPack Program provides backpacks full of comfort items to abused/neglected, foster, homeless and refugee children. Most of these children are displaced from their homes with just the clothes on their back. BackPack Beginnings developed our Comfort BackPack Program to help ensure that every child in our program receives comfort and care during this traumatic time in their lives.

Our Comfort BackPacks are distributed to our partner agencies on a quarterly basis. As soon as the children come in contact with our partner agencies, the agencies will have the backpacks on hand to give to the child.

To see a complete list of the partner agencies that receive our Comfort BackPacks, please click here.

No, all Comfort BackPacks are gender and age specific. Our age groups are 3-6, 7-11 and 12-17. We also work with our partner agencies to determine the needs of their children and make sure services are not duplicated.

Some of the items included in our Comfort BackPacks are a book, hygiene products, stuffed animal, socks, blanket, school supplies, toy, coloring or activity books and more.

No! BackPack Beginnings is a free program for all recipients.

It costs BackPack Beginnings $20 to purchase the backpacks and all items included in them, although the value of the completed backpacks are $50-$75.

Over 92% of all donations go to purchasing the comfort items for the children. BackPack Beginnings is a 95% volunteer-run program with the remaining expenses including administrative costs, utilities, insurance, mailings, printing, etc.

You can pack your own Comfort BackPack, hold a supply drive for our comfort items, donate money or come to our office to stuff the Comfort BackPacks.

If you would like your agency to be involved, please contact Parker White at parker@backpackbeginnings.org.

BackPack Beginnings’ Food Pantry Program creates food pantries on the campuses of local schools, giving children in need direct access to free and nutritious food. We work with schools to help them establish and maintain their food pantries.

BackPack Beginnings’ Food Pantry Program focuses on providing children with direct access to food. Our pantries are managed and operated on school grounds so that children in need can access the pantries easily and discretely.

Food Pantries are usually stocked twice a month by BackPack Beginnings food delivery volunteers. School administrators give access to children who qualify for assistance on an as needed basis.

We stock food items such as fresh food, canned and dry goods (proteins, fruits, vegetables, pastas and rices), breakfast foods (cereal, oatmeal, etc.) snacks, shelf stable milk, 100% fruit juice and other food items. Click here to see a full list of food items we collect.

Food is provided directly to children. It is up to each student to determine if they need food for just themselves or their entire household.

Only the school administrators and teachers will know. All children are anonymous to BackPack Beginnings’ volunteer staff and volunteers.

No! BackPack Beginnings is a free program for all recipients.

It only cost $5 to feed a child a meal from our Food Pantry. Depending on the need at the school, the average cost is $170 to fully stock a pantry for a month or $1,500 to stock a pantry for the entire year.

Over 92% of all donations go to purchasing the food for the children. BackPack Beginnings is a 95% volunteer-run program with the remaining expenses including administrative costs, utilities, insurance, mailings, printing, etc.

You can hold a supply drive to collect food items for our pantries, donate money, come to our office to help sort food or deliver food to the schools.

Please click here to see the schools we serve through our Food Pantry Program. If you would like your school to be involved, please contact Parker White at parker@backpackbeginnings.org.

BackPack Beginnings’ Clothing Pantry Program provides access to 100% free clothing including daily wear and Standard Mode of Dress (SMOD/school uniforms) clothing for children ages 0-17 in Guilford County.

BackPack Beginnings’ Clothing Pantry Program focuses on providing children in Guilford Country Schools and among Child Service Agencies with access to free clothing. Our pantries are managed and operated at the BackPack Beginnings office during select shopping times. Shoppers must be accompanied by a social worker. We stock both new and gently used clothing.

Social workers and school administrative staff shop for children in need and give the clothing they receive to children when in need.

We stock our clothing pantry with gently used and new clothing items such as pants/shorts, shirts, sweaters, coats, dresses, socks and shoes. SMOD/school uniform clothing includes pants/shorts, shirts, jumpers and dresses. We also have accessories such as hats, gloves, belts, tights, etc.

We only stock children’s clothing in sizes 0-17. Our program aims to directly serve children in need.

Only the school administrators and social workers will know. All children are anonymous to BackPack Beginnings’ volunteer staff and volunteers.

No! BackPack Beginnings is a free program for all recipients.

$0! We rely on donations of clothes year-round to help us keep our shelves stocked for children in need. When necessary and funds are available, we purchase SMOD/school uniform clothing such as non-logo collared shirts, pants/shorts, skirts and jumpers.

Over 92% of all donations go directly toward serving children. BackPack Beginnings is a 95% volunteer-run program with the remaining expenses including administrative costs, utilities, insurance, mailings, printing, etc.

You can hold a clothing drive to collect new and gently used clothing for our pantries, donate money or come to our office and help sort and hang clothing.

Please click here to see the organizations we serve. If you would like your organization to be involved, please contact Parker White at parker@backpackbeginnings.org.