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Representatives from the McDonald’s Golden Grants Program joined Food For People staff outside of the non profit’s 14th Street site on Friday morning to present them with a $10,000 check to help support the Food For People Backpacks for Kids program. 

Carly Robbins, executive director for Food For People, told the Outpost that this grant money will help provide meals for school-age children who are struggling to meet their nutritional needs. The Backpacks for Kids program was launched in 2006 in response to teachers and administrators at local schools noticing that many children were having trouble focusing and displaying behavioral issues when they returned to school on Mondays. They identified that many of these children were not meeting their nutritional goals over the weekends, Robbins said. 

Backpacks for Kids helps combat the issue by working with the schools to identify children who are struggling and sending them home on Fridays with a backpack full of nutritious food – enough for two breakfasts, two lunches, two dinners and snacks – to get them through the weekend. Currently the program serves 37 different sites, with around 600 children signed up, but there are many more children in need and this funding will help expand the program to serve more families. 

“We always have children on the waiting list that we just don’t have the funding to serve,” Robbins said outside of Food For People on Friday morning. “So this [grant] is huge. This will allow us to expand out and serve more children on the waiting list, which is really wonderful.” 

And the program has been very successful, Robbins said, and teachers have reported seeing a significant improvement in the recipients, with children arriving at school on Mondays with more energy, more ability to focus and less behavioral issues. Robbins added that this crucial program is “very grassroots,” receiving no state or federal funding. It is completely supported through grants and local contributions. 

The McDonald’s Golden Grant Program is made possible through donations from McDonald’s owners and operators, who donated $40,000 in funding this past year. The program aims to support nonprofit programs that benefit children, including nutritional or educational programs. Out of more than 100 applicants, Food for People was selected for the top grant award of $10,000, and 16 other applicants throughout Northern California received somewhere between $1,000 and $5,000. 

Cosmo Fagundo, the owner operator of all the McDonald’s in Humboldt County, said that the grant committee selected Food For People’s application because it offers help to a lot of local children and has a noticeable positive impact. 

“Our communities are really important to us,” Fagundo told the Outpost about the grant selection process.  “This is a great program – it serves so many people. Food for People does an amazing job, so that’s really the reason for it. They’re making a huge impact.”