During the 2018-2019 school year the food pantry at Oakland Beach School received almost 2,000 pounds of food from the Rhode Island Food Bank and was able to feed 14 students weekly through the backpack program. 

When Cameron Kadek  took over in 2019 as Family Engagement Facilitator for the Warwick Public Schools she saw the small pantry inside the nurse’s office and thought more could be done. She was already visiting other Title 1 Schools each week and decided to expand the program to the different schools. 

Last year Kadek said the pantry received more than 9,500 pounds of food and were able to feed 63 students weekly across four Title 1 Schools. This year they are serving five Title 1 schools through the program. And this year with an Alan Shaw Feinstein grant some individual schools will have their own backpack programs as well.

“Title I is the federal program that provides funding to local school districts to improve the academic achievement of students. Title I funds are allocated to those schools with the highest concentration of low-income families,” the Warwick Public School Department website reads. 

Hoxsie, Lippitt, Norwood, Oakland Beach and Scott Elementary Schools are all Title 1 Schools. 

Kadek explained that the concept of the backpack program is to make sure students have food even when they aren’t in school. She said that students who receive free and reduced lunch are able to get up to 10 meals a week between breakfast and lunch each day but when those students go home they may not have enough food at home. 

“We want to make sure they have some food over the weekend to help with that food insecurity,” she said.  

In the front lobby of Lippitt are hundreds of pounds of food lined up on shelves.  Lippitt is one of the schools in Warwick that took advantage of the $2,000 grant and started their own pantry.

The food came from a food drive. In a week students and staff were able to collect 450 pounds of food for the school’s brand new food pantry. The food will be used for their own backpack program.

“We have never gotten this kind of response,” said Principal Martin Susla.

Like the one through Oakland Beach Susla said that they will have a registration for parents to sign up their student(s) for the backpack program. 

For those that are signed up for the backpack program at Lippitt, Susla said staff will be contacting the parents each week to find out if there is anything specific they may need or want at home and will try to provide it to them. 

From there school staff will load up the bags and they will be distributed to students on Fridays. Susla said he hopes to use backpacks so there isn’t any stigma attached to it. 

Susla said he is hopeful that the backpack program at Lippitt can start off with 10 to 15 families and will grow over the years.

“A lot of families won’t accept it even though they need it, they won’t accept it,” he said. 

For Kadek she has learned to navigate the backpack program while also being faced with COVID. 

Last year when students attended school and they were signed up for the backpack program the students were able to get the backpacks at school and bring them home.

For those who did distance learning Kadek had a time when she was set up outside of Oakland Beach School and passed out groceries.

It was through this that a new idea was formed to enhance the backpack program even further. 

When parents came to get the groceries she was able to load boxes with food. Because the backpacks traditionally have to be light enough for students to carry she was able to send parents off with more food when they picked it up. 

This year she decided to start a “open hours” shopping event where parents are able to go to Oakland Beach School at the end of the month to pick out what they want and to have the opportunity to not only get more groceries but to be able to get heavier items like laundry detergent for example that would be a hard task for elementary school students to carry on their backs.

Kadek said that the first event took place in November and they had 15 people that came. She hopes that more families will take advantage of it. 

For those interested in making a donation to the food pantry they can do so by contacting Kadek at cameron.kadek@warwickschools.org