For many families facing food insecurity, free lunches provided at school might be the only consistent meal their children receive on a daily basis. But when school isn't in session on weekends, holiday breaks and summer vacations, children don't have access to the cafeteria lunch menu, and many children won't eat a filling meal until they return to class. That's where Power Packs Project comes in.

Power Packs Project is a nonprofit organization that seeks to eliminate hunger in schools throughout Lancaster, Lebanon and York counties. Power Packs Project partners with local school districts such as Hempfield, Lampeter-Strasburg, Penn Manor, Donegal, Warwick, Columbia and Lancaster to provide students with a meal kit called a Power Pack. The kit is stuffed with healthy ingredients for an easy-to-make meal, as well as fresh produce and a few snacks, and the Power Packs are distributed to food-insecure students to make sure they won't go hungry over the weekend without access to free meals in the cafeteria. During the 2023-24 school year, Power Packs Project distributed approximately 440,000 pounds of food, and the Hempfield branch alone currently serves 200 families in the Hempfield School District every week.

Hempfield Power Packs sources most of its meal kit components from the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank, where it can procure food for a fraction of the price charged by grocery stores. But according to the Hempfield chapter's director, Amy Jordan, items such as peanut butter, canned fruit, pasta, rice and other meal staples items difficult to source from the food bank due to their cost or availability.

In the same way Power Packs Project picks up the slack when children don't have access to their school cafeteria, local community food drives step up to the plate to help the nonprofit find items that the food bank can't provide. For the past five years, Mountville Elementary School has held an annual holiday food drive to encourage students and their families to donate food for Hempfield Power Packs. Every year, Power Packs provides the school with a list of specific items it is most in need of, which included canned soup, canned vegetables and peanut butter, as well as macaroni and cheese for the drive in December 2024. "We provide them with a list of specific needs because all families' Power Packs should be the same, rather than having people bring anything from the pantry," Jordan said. "The holiday food drive is super helpful for our program."

In addition to Mountville Elementary School, organizations such as local lacrosse teams, baseball teams, Scouts BSA troops and Girl Scout troops have held food drives for Power Packs in the past. Power Packs Project also relies on community fundraising to sustain its operation, which is run entirely by unpaid volunteers. With the rising cost of inflation and steadily increasing enrollment numbers, Hempfield Power Packs is counting on the community more than ever to join the fight against food insecurity. "We've been active for 10 years, and our enrollment has increased each year. This is the highest number of families we've ever had," Jordan said. "I think it speaks to the need within the community. It's not cheap for anyone to (shop at) the grocery stores these days."

To meet the growing demand in the community, Hempfield Power Packs is seeking volunteers to fill leadership roles and helm projects such as fundraising efforts, school district relations, meal packing operations and distribution procedures. Coordinators are needed for packing and distribution at the organization's facility located at 6020 Lemon St., East Petersburg.

For more information about becoming a volunteer, email Jordan at teamjordan5@comcast.net or visit http://www.powerpacksproject.org.