It started as one person packing weekend lunches for 18 students at a single Baltimore school every week. But now, after 20 years, it has transformed into an independent nonprofit organization that serves roughly 1,800 students across more than 50 Baltimore County and city schools.
Weekend Backpacks, a grassroots initiative addressing food insecurity among school-age children in Baltimore, now operates on a much larger scale, with its impact felt across the homes of many Baltimoreans.
According to the Baltimore Hunger Project, 24% of children face food insecurity in Baltimore, a reality that carries long-term consequences. Research shows that children facing food insecurity are 50% more likely to miss school and twice as likely to repeat a grade.
“We’re speaking to some of the kids who haven’t been exposed to [food insecurity], and what I usually [ask] is: So, what did you have for lunch yesterday, on Saturday? And they’ll raise up hands and say what they had,” Stuart “Stu” Dettelbach, president of the board of directors for Weekend Backpacks and a former president of Har Sinai-Oheb Shalom Congregation, said. “What if you didn’t have lunch? We’d be hungry. Well, there are plenty of children in Baltimore who don’t get lunch on Saturday and are hungry, and that’s why we do what we do.”
Dettelbach, who has been president of the board of directors for eight years, started working with Weekend Backpacks in the summer of 2016, when his synagogue, Har Sinai-Oheb Shalom Congregation, was searching around to find social justice project to support.
Now about one year retired after 54 years of running his own business in Pikesville, Dettelbach said he was able to apply his business experience to support Weekend Backpacks becoming an official nonprofit.
“I found our first location in Reisterstown on Old Court Road, went to the landlord, who had this building sitting empty, and convinced them that they should let us be in here at no charge,” Dettelbach said. “We were there for several years at no charge. Then the building got sold, and we paid a minimal rent there, but we outgrew the space.”
As the number of bags increased, so did the need for room. “It was one thing when you were doing 200 bags a week, 300 bags a week, but when you get about a thousand bags, that’s a lot of food and you need a lot of area,” Dettelbach said.
Each bag contains 13 to 14 pounds of food, designed to sustain students through the weekend when school meals aren’t available; however, Dettelbach noted, the weight has been the organization’s biggest challenge.
“When you give [the backpack] to a little first or second grader, it’s hard to carry home,” explained Dettelbach. “But you want them to have food, so that’s always been an issue.”
The other challenge, Dettelbach mentioned, is the stigma.
“We don’t put our name on anything,” Dettelbach said. “But sometimes, with some kids, there’s a stigma to them getting this food and taking it home.”
Dettelbach told Baltimore Jewish Times that his involvement with Weekend Backpacks is deeply rooted in Jewish values. He strongly believes in tikkun olam, repairing the world, and that he teaches his own kids that “they have an obligation to help other people.”
Dettelbach said the thing he is most proud of about the organization is the volunteers who continued to support Weekend Backpacks during the pandemic.
“Friday, March 13, [2020], was the last Friday prior to the beginning of everything shutting down,” Dettelbach said. “Some of our board members said, ‘Well, we’re going to shut down,’ and some of us said, ‘We can’t shut down.’” We never missed the beat. So, that first week of COVID, we delivered bags of food.”
Today, Weekend Backpacks is located in Timonium, and has also received support from community partners such as the Maryland Food Bank and the Baltimore Ravens, who donated a delivery van.
“None of this would be possible without our founders, without our dedicated volunteers who come in on a snowy day and pack because the bags of food need to go out each week,” Dettelbach added. “We’re just very fortunate.”
