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Feed the Bay is combatting hunger this school year beyond the borders of the Anchor Bay School District, expanding its reach to a New Haven Community Schools building.

“Our team felt as if we had been really blessed with community involvement, and financially, we felt like we could expand the program,” Watermark Church Rev. Lerrin Wentworth said.

The Feed the Bay Backpack Program, which has served the Anchor Bay School District since 2013, provides children in need with weekend food during the school year through a volunteer-run and community-supported initiative, as school free and reduced lunch programs provide food only on school year weekdays. Students identified by school staff as being at risk are eligible for the program. These students receive a bag of food for weekend meals each week.

In Watermark Church’s September newsletter, it was announced New Haven Elementary School would be added to the program this school year. Wentworth said Darlene Nowaczyk, the Feed the Bay volunteer coordinator and a community partnerships director for Watermark Church, began facilitating the partnership with New Haven Elementary School last spring.

“We just felt like things were going well with the program, and we had the opportunity to expand and really have a bigger impact than in the past,” Wentworth said.

To prepare the weekend meals, Feed the Bay hosts packing and inventory nights each month. Volunteers participate at 51890 Washington St. in New Baltimore, where the Anchor Bay School District’s transportation department is housed. On packing nights, volunteers prepare about 400 bags of food for delivery to students at their schools, packing for two weeks at a time. Some also serve as drivers to drop food off at the school offices.

An inventory night is set for Sept. 14 from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m., and a packing night is set for Sept. 21 from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Registration can be completed online at watermarkchurchmi.churchcenter.com/registrations/events/1409847. Groups interested in volunteering can email feedthebaynb@gmail.com.

“We have some incredible volunteers we see every single week that go to the back room and grab a number of bags and take them to the schools. Each school distributes them how they see fit. I know in some schools the office gets a person to go and put it in the kids’ backpacks without anyone knowing. It is a little different at every school; they make sure that no kid feels singled out or embarrassed,” Wentworth said.

The first drop-off of the year is Sept. 30. Wentworth said that although details are still being worked out with New Haven Elementary, he anticipates staff will let the office know if they see a student who could qualify. The office would in turn inform Feed the Bay. In the Anchor Bay School District, information comes to Feed the Bay via the district’s central office. The schools in the program provide numbers of students in need to Feed the Bay, not names, Wentworth said.

“So they get it every weekend during the school year. And we start towards the end of September. It takes awhile for the school to get the numbers to us,” Wentworth said. “And then we run to Memorial Day weekend. So it goes home every weekend that there is school.”

The number of students the program will serve this year was not available as of Sept. 2. Last year, before the addition of the New Haven school, about 225 students were served, Wentworth said.

Lists of accepted food donations and information on monetary donations can be found at facebook.com/feedthebayNB. For more information, email feedthebaynb@gmail.com.

Nicole Tuttle is a freelance reporter for MediaNews Group.

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