KLAS-TV 8

The school district provides free or low cost meals to students during the week, but Three Square also provides food to children to take home over the weekend. Without it, many of them would go hungry.

The program desperately needs money to help fill the need for the next school year.

Food is packaged into backpacks at the Three Square Food Bank. Three Square President Julie Murray says all of it will go home with thousands of valley kids. “Our weekend feeding program called the BackPack for Kids, ensures the children who don’t have food receive a nutritious bag of food every Friday before they head home for the weekend,” she said.

But demand is outweighing supply and the backpack program needs donations. “It takes about $1.3 million to run the backpack program and we have about $300,000 raised so far. We’re about $1 million short,” she said.

Murray says a year ago nearly 40-percent of Las Vegas’ kids were on the free or reduced meal program. That number is now up to 45-percent.

‘It’s so sad to see how many middle class families have lost their jobs in this recession and for the first time, their lives have had to access services such as food,” she said.

Murray is concerned this fall more kids will go to school hungry and those children will struggle in class. “If a child shows up at school or at their summer camp without food and without nutrition, they are not able to learn or engage. Studies have shown that if they don’t have nutrition in those developmental years, it’s almost challenging for them to succeed in life and carry on to high school and college,” she said.

A mother herself, Murray hates to think of kids going hungry, but she remains optimistic that the next year will be better than the last.

Three Square needs to raise the cash by July in order to buy food before the new school year starts.

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