En Young, executive director of The Food Basket, Hawaii Island’s food bank, was presented with a $25,000 check from the Max and Yetta Karasik Foundation to support the agency’s “We’ve Got Your Back” Keiki Backpack Program.
En Young, executive director of The Food Basket, Hawaii Island’s food bank, was presented with a $25,000 check from the Max and Yetta Karasik Foundation to support the agency’s “We’ve Got Your Back” Keiki Backpack Program.
Foundation trustees Dr. and Mrs. Richard Robbins, along with Laupahoehoe Community Public Charter School Principal Alapaki Nahale-a, were in attendance to receive the donation.
“My wife and I, on behalf of the Max and Yetta Karasik Family Foundation, support various Big Island initiatives. The Kids Back Pack Program is one of those programs that has wide community benefits and meets the goals of our organization. Mahalo to En, for his excellent work in this endeavor,” Robbins said as he passed the check to Young.
Laupahoehoe Community Public Charter School is one of nine schools on Hawaii Island that benefits from the Keiki Backpack Program.
Nahale-a gave the special guests a tour, pointing out the new gardens, where all students spend time gardening once a week. The food grown and harvested from the garden is served in their school lunches. Farther up the hill is a donated green house being built and an area where the community has come together to restore what used to be a thriving piggery.
“Our school’s goal is to provide high quality public education for students in kindergarten through 12th grade, much of it experiential learning in a values-based environment and closely tied to the community,” Nahale-a said. “We are teaching skills of self-sufficiency to a generation of children, many of whom experience poverty on a daily basis and haven’t had access to that learning.”
At LCPCS, 72 percent of the 250 K-12 students qualify for free or reduced-price meals.
“You can’t believe what a positive difference the backpack program makes in the lives of our students, when for many of them what they eat at school is the only food they eat all day and going hungry is a reality on weekends,” Nahale-a said.
For five years, The Food Basket has been helping Big Island keiki get the nutritious and easy-to-prepare food they need to get enough when school is not in session. Packages of supplemental nutrition are distributed to more than 1,450 children once a month at nine schools on Hawaii Island.
“The Food Basket is honored to have the Karasik Foundation’s continuing support of our efforts to end hunger and its root causes,” Young said.
For more information about the Keiki Backpack Program, contact The Food Basket at 933-6030 or visit hawaiifoodbasket.org.