Backpack Drive Helps Children in Need

A Louisville-based group called “Blessings in a Backpack” is working to collect backpacks for the upcoming school year. The non-profit gives backpacks to elementary students in the federal Free and Reduced Lunch Program and fills the backpacks with food each Friday.Board member Lisa Kahl-Hillerich says sometimes those students go without food over the weekend, when their meals aren’t being provided at school.“It has to be food that doesn’t particularly need to be cooked," says Kahl-Hillerich, "because when these kids go home on the weekends, they may have absent parents, they may not have electricity, they may not have clean water.”She says the program has grown over the last year. In the 2008 school year, they serviced 57 schools nationwide. This year, they’re adding 49 schools.Blessings in a Backpack is holding a backpack drive at this week’s Waterfront Wednesday.