How to pack 506 Backpack Buddies meals for Beaufort students without breaking a sweat

On one Tuesday evening each month, crowds from all walks of Beaufort gather in the gymnasium of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on Parris Island Gateway in the common cause of sorting. And gathering. And placing. And boxing. And taping.

That’s the only way to get mass amounts of food together for the Lowcountry Food Bank’s Backpack Buddies program, and somehow it works smoothly for the hundreds of local students it benefits.

“About one in five children in the 10 coastal South Carolina counties we serve is food-insecure, which means they may not have enough food on any given day to lead a healthy life,” said Jill Hirsekorn of the Lowcountry Food Bank.

“We partner with seven schools in Beaufort, which serves 506 children every week during the school year, which totaled 19,228 bags for the school year last year!”

For it all to happen, the mass amounts of food are brought to the church for organizing. Then, right around 6 o’clock in the evening, volunteers from the community gather to work. Everyone sort of gravitates to an area of work, and some naturally find themselves grabbing plastic bags and heading down one side of a row of tables, working their way from the cans of ravioli through the cereal boxes all the way to the fruit snacks.

If the song playing in the background is “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” by the time the 11 pipers have finished piping most have already gotten about 15 bags packed by themselves, so smooth is the process. If you multiply those bags by the number of people actually involved, you can see how the whole packing is done within one bustling hour.

“It is an easy, highly-organized, once-a-month commitment that brings teachers, children and the community at-large together,” said long-time volunteer Eve Heaton. “My favorite months are when we have various high school clubs come in to help, and I like that young children can help out because it is one of those rare volunteer opportunities than an entire family can participate in.”

Thankfully, there are many like Heaton who come simply because they were asked, and many end up inviting even more. And it’s true, the young can be seen striding alongside the older, both moving at the same thoughtful pace to ensure no food item gets missed.

If an item is missed, however, before the bags are tied and stuffed into larger boxes, a team literally counts that all food and drink is in the bag. This ensures every child is satiated, not shorted. And if you think the counting team is important, you should talk to the stealthy volunteers who restock the tables every time it looks like the last mini-box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch is gone.

After all the packing is done — generally well into the thousands of bags by the end of the hour — Carolina Moving and Storage donates time and trucks to pick up the boxes and take them to seven different elementary schools in Beaufort County for distribution.

It’s a lot of food and a lot of work, but the time passes much quicker being surrounded by cheerful people working an assembly line that would make Henry Ford blush.

So if you’re still feeling the effects of the Thanksgiving turkey or looking forward to the Christmas ham, remember that because of programs like Backpack Buddies — and the local volunteers who help them — our younger generations are not going hungry in these difficult times.