When New Canaan residents Shawnee Knight and Tina Kramer founded a nonprofit in 2013 to ensure that kids on reduced or free meal plans at their schools had food through the weekend and summer, one of their volunteers voiced concern about what would happen during the holidays.
That volunteer, Roseann Conheeney, saw to it that the 100 kids then served by Filling In The Blanks or went home for break in December 2013 with a new backpack filled not only with food but also gifts.
Fast-forward 10 years. In 2023, the nonprofit operating out of its Norwalk warehouse put together 5,000 holiday backpacks.
And this year, they’re doing 9,000—a testament to both increasing food insecurity and to the expanding reach of Filling In The Blanks (the organization’s recently launched mobile food pantry now serves some 1,500 families per month in Norwalk, Stamford and Bridgeport, and has served 659,000 pounds of fresh food since last October).
This year, with its nearly 100% increase in demand, Filling In The Blanks is asking the community for donations to help offset the cost for the holiday meal bags that go into the backpacks that their student clients get before setting off for December break (the food costs about $10 per bag, and the organization pays for 99% of the food it packs).
“We have to send out 9,000 holiday meal bags, and it’s extremely important to make sure that those bags are going to the kids,” FITB co-founder Tina Kramer told NewCanaanite.com during an interview Monday afternoon at the organization’s headquarters, sitting near the rows of “packing tables” that scores of New Canaan youth and families volunteer to pack most days. “They have a week-and-a-half off and they’re not going to have those breakfast and lunch programs that the schools provide. So this might be a majority of the food they’re receiving for that week off.”
In addition to the food that Filling In The Blanks plans to provide its 9,000 clients, the bags contain special items such as toys, an age-appropriate book (thanks to Reading Is Fundamental and Pitney Bowes), mittens (donated this year by New Canaan Ski & Sport) and cookie and muffin mix “to do something special,” co-founder Shawnee Knight said.
“When we started doing the Holiday backpacks, we would put pancake mix in,” she said. “So there was something special for our families to do together. And we had such great feedback on that, we decided to make it part of our regular meal bag program. It was a special treat, so now we’re doing cookies and muffins.”
Filling In The Blanks—an organization that will also seek to raise much-needed funds during Giving Tuesday next month (three donors that have come together to create a $25,000 match for the day of fundraising)—puts “a lot of personal touches” into the holiday backpacks, according to the organization’s communications coordinator, New Canaan resident Jera Flood.
Watching the kids receive the backpacks filled with food and personal items is “one of the best, most heartwarming experiences because sometimes you get to go into the classrooms and you put the backpacks out and the kids just light up,” Flood said.
“They look forward to it every year,” she added. “So it’s really nice to see the hard work and where it goes and then handing off the backpack and know that you’re making a difference.”
Filling In The Blanks is also seeing strong demand for fresh food items through its mobile food pantry, Flood said.
“The need is great and people are very happy to have access to fresh produce, fresh meats, fresh milk, eggs—the stuff that they wouldn’t normally be able to get,” she said. “It’s an adjunct to the meal bag program, because obviously the meal bag program is all ‘shelf-stable’ items. So this enhances the food that they’re receiving. It’s always helpful to remind ourselves how great the need is and that people are still showing up every week. Rain, shine, cold—it doesn’t matter.”
Click here for information on how to support Filling In The Blanks as it seeks to pack 9,000 meal bags for its Holiday Backpacks program.