Ensuring Children Don’t Go Hungry on the Weekends
The Weekend Power Pack program sends backpacks of food, known as Power Packs, home with students on Fridays to meet the nutritional needs of Fauquier County children who have been identified as at risk of hunger on weekends. Each bag contains enough food to feed a family of four for the weekend, providing hunger relief beyond just the individual child. We also ensure that children are sent home with enough food to cover each day missed from school during Thanksgiving, Christmas, Spring break, and all 3-day weekends. We provide an abundance of Snow Day Kits to our schools. These kits contained food that can be sent home in anticipation of weather related cancellations.
FISH’s Weekend Power Pack program provides approximately 570 Fauquier County Public School (FCPS) and Headstart children with food each week during the school year. Program volunteers deliver the bags of food to county schools for the children to take home.
During the summer months, FISH partners with Fauquier Reaches for Excellence in School Health (FRESH), Fauquier Community Child Care (FCCC), Boys and Girls Club, and summer school to provide power packs to our families. During the summer of 2023, we provided over 900 power packs of food to our families in need.
What’s Inside a Power Pack?
Power Packs contain family-sized portions of breakfast, lunch, and dinner along with snacks. Examples of what you might find in a Power Pack include cereal, peanut butter, spaghetti & sauce, granola bars, an apple, and other healthy options. Following the food pantry’s model, we attempt to include at least one DASH (Delicious, Affordable, Simple and Healthy) meal that come with all the ingredients, canned meat, seasoning, and recipe to make a satisfying meal for the family.
Get Involved
You can help children in Fauquier County receive the proper nutrition they need. If you or your company are interested in sponsoring a weekly power pack, please contact us at weekendpowerpack@fauquierfish.org. You can help us by making a donation to the Power Pack program. Due to rising food costs, each power pack now costs approximately $9 to send home on a weekly basis.
Get Help
Please contact your school’s guidance office for information on how to receive a weekend power pack or contact weekendpowerpack@fauquierfish.org and we can send you the contact information.
Child Hunger Facts
According to the USDA, 15.9 million children in the US live in households where they are unable to consistently access enough nutritious food necessary for a healthy life. Read more from feedingamerica.org & nokidhungry.org.