On September 28, the first- and second-year students in the Master of Science in Anesthesia Program in Houston, Texas volunteered at the Houston Food Bank.
The students worked together to pack meals for underprivileged children for the food bank’s “Backpack Buddy Program,” which the Houston Food Bank created in collaboration with local schools and districts and other community partners. The goal of the Backpack Buddy Program is to provide nutritious food for children to eat over the weekend when they aren’t able to access meals at school and would otherwise have little or no access to meals.
According to the food bank’s website, “One in four southeast Texas children are at-risk of hunger, which means they don’t have consistent access to enough nutritious food. Many of these children rely on school meals to provide breakfast and lunch during the school year. During breaks, such as weekends and holidays, many of these children go home to little or no meals. The Houston Food Bank’s Backpack Buddy program works to fill that gap.” Backpacks created through this program are distributed to area children every Friday during the school year.
Our Houston students elected to volunteer at the Houston Food Bank in order to give back to their local community. Chloe Roush, a second-year student, said, “We wanted to give back to the community in which we treat patients, and we wanted to help keep the community’s children healthy and nourished.”
MSA student volunteers were assigned a variety of tasks, including packing the backpacks for area children, unpacking boxes of canned food, and sorting through donated items. All told, CWRU MSA packed over 18,000 meals—in just four hours!
Browse photos below, or click here to visit our Facebook album and see even more photos of our students in Houston volunteering at the food bank.
