Those damned union thugs! Of course, this is part of the master plan to keep poor people dependent.. oh wait, it’s not? It’s just kindness? My bad:
Marvin Callahan, a first grade teacher at public school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has started a program to send backpacks full of food home with some of his students on the weekends after witnessing widespread hunger.
When he started the job 21 years ago, he said he had no idea how many families were struggling to feed their children or keep a roof over their heads. New Mexico has the highest rate of child hunger in the country, with nearly a third of children going to bed hungry, although the problem is widespread enough that three-quarters of the country’s teachers say students routinely show up to school hungry.
In response to the problem, Callahan and other members of the community send 37 children home with backpacks full of food each weekend: two breakfasts, two lunches, and two dinners.
As Carolyn Gregoire of the Huffington Post reports, “Retired teachers come in on Thursdays to fill up the backpacks with food items like breakfast bars, oatmeal, macaroni and cheese, beefaroni and sliced turkey — things that the kids can easily put together themselves.” He began the program two years ago out of his own pocket, although it now has donations from members of the community and local organizations.
“It’s hard for me to go home some weekends when the kids are saying, ‘I don’t want to go home because I don’t have anything at home,’” he told the Huffington Post. “I just hope that when I get home and open my refrigerator and there’s food in there, I hope that they have the same thing.”
