Backpack Buddies Bash Fundraiser Nets $200K
The funds will go toward supporting the organization’s mission of feeding food-insecure children.
The ballroom at Dunwoody Country Club was packed full of local philanthropists Sunday night on Sept. 14, all looking to raise money for Backpack Buddies of Metro Atlanta, a charity that helps feed food-insecure children over the weekends, when they can’t get school meals.
The event, which, according to Board Chair Terri Bagen, was initially going to be a simple “friend-raising” – more to raise awareness and interest than money – soon spiraled into something far larger.
“At first, our goal was 50 people,” said Kelly Dennis, who headed the organization of the event. “We were going to do tickets for free. It turned into tickets at $90 and we sold 260 tickets.”
According to Debbie Sonenshine, the organization’s secretary, Backpack Buddies of Metro Atlanta began with several disparate religious and civic organizations working independently to solve the problem, following the model set by Ronald and Samra Robbins at Congregation Beth Shalom in 2017.
“They started it with feeding 10 children at Kingsley Elementary,” said Sonenshine. “It grew, and they recruited other partners and other schools. I read about it, actually, in the Jewish Times. When I read about it, I said, ‘We’re doing this at B’nai Torah.’”
But, according to Bagen, who also helped launch the branch of Backpack Buddies at Congregation Shearith Israel, it wasn’t enough.
“We were all frustrated because we couldn’t meet the need,” said Bagen, “We were all shopping retail, and whatever budget our organization gave us or we could raise limited us to the number of kids we could serve – and we all knew we weren’t serving nearly enough.”
The charity organization has experienced rapid growth since officially uniting and incorporating as a nonprofit.
“At the time that we formed, in February 2022,” said Sonenshine, “there were 17 partners and Community Buddies, and we were feeding 750 kids a week. Today, we’re feeding over 2,500. By the end of this school year, we’ll be at 3,000.”
Sonenshine credits this success to the hard work of the volunteers, the acquisition of a new storage space in 2023, and the system organized by Director of Operations Jonathan Halitsky. First, the organization bulk orders food whenever available from the Atlanta Community Food Bank, as well as smaller food banks. Then, the food is stored and sorted at the storage space in Dunwoody. Individual organizations, called Community Buddies – the churches, synagogues, and civic organizations, many of which were originally doing this independently – come and pick up pallets of food and sort it into individual bags to bring to partner schools.
“During the week, a lot of these kids are getting free or reduced lunches at school — and breakfasts,” said Halitsky, “but when Friday rolls around, when most of us are like ‘Yay, it’s the weekend!’ These kids are dreading the weekend because they know they’re not eating. This changes the game for them because they have food during that time period, and they are fed and ready to learn.”
“One of the teachers told us, or maybe it was the principal, that there was a child roaming around the teachers’ lounge one Monday morning,” said Sonenshine, sharing a story she’d heard about a food-insecure child. “And she said, ‘What are you doing in here,’ and he said, ‘I’m hungry.’ She asked, ‘What did you eat yesterday,’ and he said, ‘No, I eat on Saturday. My brother eats on Sunday.’ I thought ‘No, no, no, no,’ I’m a Jewish mother, I can’t handle that.”
“Our founders opened my eyes to the fact that there are 180,000 food-insecure children in metro Atlanta,” Bagen said at the charity bash. “I could not stop thinking about it — and all I kept saying was, ‘Why?’ I soon realized that I was asking the wrong question. Not ‘why’ but ‘what’ – What could I do to make a difference?”
Several volunteers, board members, Community Buddy organizers, and others spoke during the event, including school counselor Piper Watkins from Brockett Elementary, one of the partner schools. She discussed the astounding impact Backpack Buddies has had on the students, and even mentioned a new club at the school, which appointed four fifth graders to help the younger kids, especially kindergarteners, pack food bags into their backpacks. But the excitement of the charity was tapered by the reality of the situation – even with the 75 backpacks they receive from their Community Buddy, Tucker First United Methodist Church, they still cannot get food to every food-insecure child at their school, every week.
This is a fact not lost on the organization’s founders.
“We know that there are 180,000 food-insecure children in the area,” said Sonenshine, “We’re helping over 2,500 of them. We’ve got a long way to go but we’ve made a big difference so far.”
“We have succeeded beyond our dreams,” said Bagen, “but on the other hand we’ve barely made a dent.”
By the end of the night, though, that dent had gotten substantially larger. After ticket sales, money raised by individual donors during the paddle raise, and donations from corporate sponsors, the total earned in one night alone was revealed: “I think I was hoping for about $30,000,” said Dennis, beaming. “We’ve now earned well over $200,000.”
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