Around Town

‘You’re Making a Difference’: Local Nonprofit ‘Filling In The Blanks’ Calls for Support of Its Holiday Meal Bag Program

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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).

Filling in the Blanks

‘It’s Going To Feed Thousands’: Filling In The Blanks Earns $100,000 IMPACT Grant

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When Tina Kramer and Shawnee Knight founded the nonprofit organization Filling in the Blanks in 2013, their mission was to feed as many children facing food insecurity as possible. 

Fast forward to more than one decade later, and Filling in the Blanks is one of two Fairfield County nonprofits to receive a major grant. The $100,000 “IMPACT Fairfield County” grant is “a big deal,” according to Knight. “It’s going to provide 175,000 pounds of food to families, so we’ll be able to do seven additional distributions next year,” she said. “It’s really important to the families, it’s going to feed thousands.”

Kramer, Knight, Filling in the Blanks volunteers, state legislators and representatives from IMPACT attended a check presentation ceremony at the nonprofit’s Norwalk packing and fulfillment center. 

The beloved organization has sourced, packaged and delivered more than 2 million weekend meals to children. 

That caught the eye of IMPACT co-presidents Jenny San Jose and Kristen Rosenbaum. IMPACT encourages women to engage in local philanthropy through deeper knowledge and active participation in grantmaking.

Around Town

Local Nonprofit ‘Filling in the Blanks’ Hits 10-Year Milestone

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Ten years ago, New Canaan’s Shawnee Knight and Tina Kramer were looking for something worthwhile that they could do on their own. 

On learning about the national Blessings in a Backpack program, they connected with an area summer camp to kickstart a food-packing program. It was funded entirely by themselves, and the friends not only learned a lot about the logistics of such an undertaking, they saw a very real need up close. That Christmas, they arranged to deliver, themselves, special holiday backpacks for the 100 kids at Stamford’s Domus—kids on free or reduced lunch at a school that serves some of the city’s most at-risk youth. Soon they founded an 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization—Filling in the Blanks—to ensure that those kids also had food on the weekends throughout the school year. That was in 2013.

News

Quiet Heroes of New Canaan: Hunter Van Veghel

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The food drive that New Canaan-based nonprofit organization Filling In The Blanks ran that day had already been a huge success. 

Held May 21 at New Canaan Library, it saw about 100 vehicles come through and raised some 5,200 individual food items for the organization, according to co-founders and co-Presidents Tina Kramer and Shawnee Knight. Launched in 2013, the organization provides thousands of area children in need with weekend meals. The generous donations at the food drive organized with the library are especially important at a time of wide food scarcity, Kramer said. ”We are having difficulty purchasing the food we need, because the sources we usually use are not able to get us the items we are used to, so we have to buy retail,” she said. At about 5 p.m. that Thursday, members of the Filling In The Blanks team were unloading a truck of food at the organization’s Norwalk warehouse when the driver, 2012 New Canaan High School graduate Hunter Van Veghel, spotted a few young kids playing basketball at a shuttered school nearby.