Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
- USANA's Holiday Food Bag Program addresses food insecurity among Utah students during breaks.
- Michelle Benedict initiated the program, which now serves thousands of students annually.
- Increased donations are needed due to rising food insecurity, affecting 1 in 6 Utah children.
SALT LAKE CITY — The prospect of a child aged 5 or 10 or 17 going hungry during their nearly two-week December break continues to be difficult for Michelle Benedict to accept.
She knows that many students are food insecure, unsure of when they will eat their next meal. She has always been aware that students without a consistent source of food outside of school are anxious about going home on the weekends, the Thanksgiving holiday and the second half of December.
But Benedict also knows that she lives in a community where people are searching for volunteer opportunities not only for themselves but their children, as well. Bringing all this knowledge together gave her the idea for filling the needs of both groups: food bag donations for local students.
"We wanted to catch the students falling through the cracks," Benedict said. She is the director of global programs for USANA. "There were people in my community who wanted to teach their children character and let them see that people live different from them. Helping with these bags helped them do that."
Fifteen years ago, Benedict — on her own, as a mother of three — contacted Salt Lake School District and asked how to help families that she knew were struggling. With their suggestion, she filled bags with food items and donated them to a school with the most need, allowing children to eat during the weekends. Over the years, her project, which was intended to give her children a way to give back, increased to more schools, more students and more towns.
The folks at USANA hired her five years ago to continue to run the food bag program, which also provides donated items to students for the two-week December break. An official name was given to the program — Holiday Food Bag Program — and volunteers were asked to sign up for a school and how many bags they would fill in their own at home. Last year, the program served 4,300 students in schools from Payson to Ogden.
To sign up to donate with USANA's Holiday Food Bag Program:
On Friday, Nov. 1, visit usanakidseat.org and create a volunteer account. What you will do:
- Once you create the account, you'll follow prompts and sign up for how many bags you will fill for whichever school you select.
- This is a do-it-yourself project, although USANA will provide you with the bags you need to deliver the food.
- You will deliver the food to the schools at the agreed-upon time with the school.
This year, the program could not come at a better time. The number of children in Utah who are food insecure has increased as a result of job loss, inflation affecting food prices, rising housing costs and more. The national food advocacy nonprofit Feeding America believes that 1 in 6 Utah children is food insecure, an increase of 6% compared to last year. More donations — food and financial — are needed now more than ever.
"Backpack programs like these serve an urgent need to get food to children," said Neil Rickard, the child nutrition advocate for Utahns Against Hunger. "We know that meals in school are the most important nutritional component of the day for many students. Students miss these meals when they don't have school so a program like this is important."
USANA's food bag program does not ask families to break their budgets to serve students in need. While families determine how many food bags they want to give the schools, USANA has a suggested price to spend on each bag: $25. Corporations and local nonprofits are also able to participate and can choose to help a few students or an entire school.
Benedict's children are grown adults now, no longer living at home, but she has memories of them taking action to help others. For example, her son and his friends became concerned that one of their peers was not eating. They understood the need to not bring attention to their friend's issues, so they opted to each bring extra food for lunch, place all the food in the middle of the table and grab what they wanted to eat from there. It worked. Their friend ate.
Benedict's son had compassion for his friend who was struggling, figured out a way to help and did so while keeping his friend's dignity paramount. Providing resources to those in need is important, Benedict believes, but hearing your children take these messages to heart is significant as well.
"I'm so proud of my son to think of all of this. These were the things I wanted him to learn when we were doing these bags together," she said. "I know so many people looking for volunteer opportunities for everyone, including their small children. These food bags, you can start your kids as young as 5, letting them put food in each bag or grab cereal at the grocery store. The whole family can be a part of this."
