Homeless Backpacks volunteers bag 7,400 meals in 24 hours to feed families this summer

Homeless Backpacks put volunteers and staff to work during its first ever 24-hour Bag-a-thon, which will help distribute 10,000 meals to youth throughout the summer.

Volunteers and organization staff worked from 3 p.m. Friday to 3 p.m. Saturday inside Columbia Bank off College Street in Lacey, packing 7,400 bags with foods for families, school children and homeless youth in Thurston County.

In previous years, the non-profit served roughly 600 homeless youth in the county while school was in session. This year, Homeless Backpacks will provide lunches during the summer months for the first time; they also expanded service to help nearly 1,000 people, including families and school children.

“We knew the need would not just magically stop now that school’s out,” said Kelly Wilson, chair and founder of Homeless Backpacks in Thurston County.

Summer is usually Homeless Backpacks off season, when volunteers can a take a break from the work they do during the school year. After COVID-19 shutdown the state, increasing unemployment and putting families in financially precarious situations, Wilson and fellow board members decided to stay open. Because summer had never been done before, “we needed to come up with a plan on how to get bags bagged,” Wilson told The Olympian.

Hawks Prairie Rotary came up with a system to get food, build a budget and distribute to people. “We ran with it,” Wilson said.

Serving Olympia, Tumwater and Tenino school districts, Homeless Backpacks will supply 10,000 free weekend meals to schools this summer which will be distributed by the school districts at their meal pick-up sites on Fridays.

But getting so many backpacks filled was a big project. To meet the high demand, the organization sent out a call for help, and people from around Thurston County answered.

One of the first groups to show up at the Bag-a-thon was Bring, a collective of business owners from around Thurston County who direct potential customers to one another. Bring also likes to volunteer and give back to the community that has given so much to its members, said Bring member Kevin Gordham.

Gordham, who is a Realtor, came with his wife to the Bag-a-thon. When the two walked into the bagging room, Gordham said “it sort of overwhelmed me.” Cans of chili and ravioli, packets of ramen and macaroni and cheese, granola and rice crispy bars were stacked to the ceiling.

Volunteers worked their way down a table set up with bins containing the various nonperishables, packing bag after bag then placing them in banana boxes which would be carted out to box trucks in the parking lot.

“It’s really amazing,” Gordham said.

Bring had signed up for a two-hour shift, from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, to pack over 600 bags.

“We got numbers to meet, man!” said Kama Montermini, who came out as a part of her commitment to volunteer more. “I feel like it’s a competition and I need to win.”

The group maintained a brisk pace packing bags. Working to music playing from a portable speaker one of the organizers brought, the group made quick work of their bagging quota and was finished after only an hour.

After groups packed up all the bags allotted to them, they would help sanitize the area for whomever came next.

Organizers estimated that about 16 volunteer groups of people came to pack bags, from business leaders to high school students. Olivia Sloma, a rising senior at Olympia High School, said she came out because she “was just bored.”

Matthew Klifman, a Homeless Backpacks board member, helped oversee the organization of the event and said it took a village to make it happen. “It’s really been a completely engaged community, problem solving, figuring what needed to be done in order for us to get bags to students in need. It’s not one thing, there’s been great ideas brought up by different school districts, board members, business leaders, volunteers. It’s been a great collaboration of all those ideas together that made this happen.”

Klifman was glad to see so many people coming out to help. He said t it was evidence that despite ongoing problems in society, people still care for one another.

Kelly Wilson worked until about 5:30 p.m. Friday and then returned to work at 2 a.m. Saturday to help the night volunteers. She said things went well during her early morning shift. People worked hard to get bags and boxes filled and onto trucks and didn’t let the early hours wear them down.

At 3 p.m. Saturday, the last of the meals were packed onto the box trucks to be delivered to school districts and distributed to kids and families throughout the summer.