News : Operation Backpack continues serving VS families

Emily Howes-Vonstein discusses the Operation Backpack program.

These students helped fill Operation Backpack bags Sunday; the program helps 100 VS students.

These Operation Backpack shirts are available for order now.

A year after 2015 Vinton-Shellsburg graduates Riley Ries and Kylie Miracle started the Operation Backpack program, three students are leading the efforts to provide food to 100 students who attend the Tilford or Shellsburg elementaries.

"I have been fortunate to always have had enough food," says Emily Howes-Vonstein. "And I like to help people."

Howes-Vonstein and two other VSHS students, Hannah Hoepner and Jenna Lane, took over the program this year.

The three student leaders work with HACAP on food deliveries, with the assistance of the Monkeytown delivery drivers. They also speak to area service groups about the program and its needs, and also collected donations while manning a RAGBRAI charging station and offering bottle water during the ride-through in July.

Donations are essential to the program. While non-perishable food items are welcome, financial donations also help cover the costs of the food items that come from HACAP's warehouse in Cedar Rapids. Quaker Oats also makes product donations.

Operation Backpack also relies on volunteer work to unload the items, arrange them neatly in the storage area provided for the program in a former locker room, and to fill the bags sent home with students each Friday. VSHS students earn Black and Gold points for volunteering. Several students gathered Sunday afternoon at Tilford to pack two weeks' worth of food items. Howes-Vonstein said the group eventually hopes to package a month's worth of meals at a time.

The students are also selling t-shirts to raise funds and awareness of the program.

Click HERE to see the T-shirt order form.