In this episode, Jonathan Breeden puts the spotlight on a remarkable community initiator, BackPack Buddies. Tune in as we talk to Mandy Williams, who shares her heartwarming mission to combat food insecurity among children in the Johnston County school system.

Mandy Williams: Sure. So we send milk and cereal two, two grits or oatmeals pop tarts. They've get soup, Chef Boyardee, ramen noodles, mac and cheese, and then a variety of snacks, whether it's granola bars or crackers or fruit snacks. In the past, I think they originally tried to get more fresh fruits in there, but you just don't have a shelf life with that.

And, the way the bagging is done, we bag a month at a time and the schools, their representative, whether it's a counselor or a teacher or volunteer, we'll come meet us at our storage unit and pick up all of their bags for that upcoming month. So there's a good amount that goes in the bags, but it has a shelf life too.

So it limits putting fresh food in there. But at the same time, it's meals that they. Otherwise wouldn't have

Jonathan Breeden: Hello and welcome to another episode of the best of Johnston County podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Breeden. And today we have a special guest with us from the Cleveland area backpack buddies program, Mandy Williams.

Welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. Well, yeah, so, I guess we'll start out with. What is Backpack Buddies?

Mandy Williams: So Backpack Buddies is now a 501c3 non profit that provides weekend meals to approximately, right now our numbers are 136 children every weekend throughout the school year. We provide weekend meals for kids at Cleveland, Palenta, and Westview Elementary Schools, and then Cleveland Middle School.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay, and how do y'all know which children are food insecure? Sure, we

Mandy Williams: work directly with the counselors and social workers for the schools.

We've got a great relationship with the counselors at each of our assigned schools or our adopted schools that we have and They know their students and their population. So they usually do a filter almost at the beginning of the school year to see where the need is. And then they just provide us a number.

We don't know who the children are. We don't know their families. We just have a number per school, but the social workers and the counselors are the ones that really identify the need. And then they just get the number to us and we fulfill it with our bags.

Jonathan Breeden: And so you say you're doing 139

Mandy Williams: bags a week?

Jonathan Breeden: I tell you what, I bet there's a lot of people that live out here in Cleveland and they look at these big houses and, you know, they see the fancy houses of whether it be Broadmoor, Adams Point, or Chadburn and, you know, the price point and think, well, there's not people that are food insecure in the Cleveland community, I know what I paid for my house, but that's not Actually the case.

Mandy Williams: That's correct. There's a huge need. And the need keeps growing as more families come into the community. As the districts change, there's more of a need. Cleveland with our numbers as they are polenta iss, our number one school that we support, and then Cleveland Elementary and then West. But the counselors are so good to work with.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. Well, I always, whenever y'all call me and try to do as much as I can, right. I really do. And the employees that work for me um, took a lot of pride in being able to do that because, you know, not we definitely doing family law here. We definitely see people who Really are food insecure.

And it isn't always what it appears. And I think people would be surprised at what people sometimes choose to spend money on. Or just their house rich and cash poor. Right. We, you know, we see a lot of that where they. They have this nice house and they're trying to make this mortgage, but the mortgage and, you know, food prices are going up now.

Mandy Williams: That has increased what our average cost per bag is. When I first started with Backpack Buddies about five years ago, I think our cost was around 6. 50 a bag. Now we haven't priced it for this school year, but we're thinking it's anywhere around 10 a bag.

And that covers. Six meals and three snacks on the weekends. So when you multiply that times 130, some kids, we are really driven based off of the community support.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. So that's, I mean, I'm not good at this. Is that $1,300 a week? I'm essentially, I'm not a math person's, but Yeah. If it's $10 a

Mandy Williams: hundred that's, that's, it's essentially, yeah.

What it is. And so, right. We have organizations like Hope Front Church they do essentially two to possibly three food drives a year and that those drives really push our donations. Like, when we're starting the school year, they have a drive, they have a drive usually in the spring and then once again in the summer, and that really helps.

Jonathan Breeden: So I guess where does this food sit? Does it sit at your house?

Mandy Williams: Well, when it first started many years ago what I call our original members on the board, the OGs, they would store it in their house. And then over time it grew out of their house and for a season it was at Hopefront, which was formerly C3 and they housed it and helped provide food for the weekend bags.

But as the need grew and as the community grew, we knew we needed to kind of expand past. The church and ended up we have a two storage units at a local storage facility that has donated some space to us that we house our food at because it's all non perishable items. So it has a shelf life, but you still have to be.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. So I guess, tell me what. What goes in a bag?

Mandy Williams: Sure. So we send milk and cereal two, two grits or oatmeals pop tarts. They've get soup, Chef Boyardee, ramen noodles, mac and cheese, and then a variety of snacks, whether it's granola bars or crackers or fruit snacks. In the past, I think they originally tried to get more fresh fruits in there, but you just don't have a shelf life with that.

And, the way the bagging is done, we bag a month at a time and the schools, their representative, whether it's a counselor or a teacher or volunteer, we'll come meet us at our storage unit and pick up all of their bags for that upcoming month. So there's a good amount that goes in the bags, but it has a shelf life too.

So it limits putting fresh food in there. But at the same time, it's meals that they. Otherwise wouldn't have

Jonathan Breeden: right. So, so y'all get together and bag

But we meet once a month. It's usually the last Sunday of the month and we'll work for maybe an hour and a half, and we have a little system in place. Then we just knock out all the bags.

Jonathan Breeden: So you're going to, you do 500 bags a

We can't leave it at our storage facility. So our volunteers sometimes will take it and put it in their recycling bin at their house. So it really, I mean, it is hands on.

Jonathan Breeden: pictures. You know, you got these tables set up and there's a bunch of people between just some regular old storage units and they're just we

Mandy Williams: have families that will donate double bag bags because that's what we used to put the food in.

And so they'll drop off. Hundreds of bags at one of our, at one of our board members houses. So there's ways to volunteer with that or coming out with the baggings and just helping sort and assemble food. It's very Anyone can do it. Like there's no real age limit. I mean, obviously a stroller child couldn't do it, but you know, we've had three and four year olds out there doing it.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. So does somebody go shop for this food? I know you said Hopefront C3 has been a big supporter for many years but, but. Is that all the food or does somebody go to Sam's Club?

Mandy Williams: Well, so it's a little bit of both. We have the food drives and they usually take care of our weekend bags. But when we do our Christmas break bags, which are different and our spring break bags, which are different, we usually go do the shop.

So someone will coordinate directly with Food Lion or go to one of the. Costco or BJ's and buy the big bulky milks, you know, stuff that we need more of. But usually it's just donations that come in people at one season, we had an Amazon wishlist and items were being sent to. Our various houses and we'd bring them up to the storage unit.

Jonathan Breeden: Man. So I guess, I mean, so you're not really going out and buying that much food because you have so much support from Hope Front Choice.

That's a big church. I mean, those members really, I mean, you think about 600, 500, 600 bags a month. Yeah.

Mandy Williams: And so like, like last February, I believe they did a super bowl drive and super was after a super bowl and it was to get as much soup donated and we had so much soup donated. We've not had to purchase soup since February because so much has come in just from that drive, but the various other jobs as well.

Well, you

Jonathan Breeden: talk about milk spoils. So this is dry milk. This is

Mandy Williams: boxed milk. So it's like the horizons, little carton box milk that has a shelf life to

My kids used to drink those,

Mandy Williams: right? Yeah. Horizons. That's usually the brand we get that has the cow on it. So yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: Right. Okay. Holly, it was, I don't know. We used to always get that for the kids cause it was. It didn't have some something, something that you didn't want your kids maybe to have, and it had the cow and you had to look, and of course, what's your kids get.

Older and mine aren't that old but like you forget which kind of cow type you had to buy. But I do remember Horizon because of the cow. That's good marketing, right? Yes. You put the cow on milk. I mean, that's awesome. So, well, that's cool.

Have family law questions? Need guidance to navigate legal challenges? The compassionate team at Breeden Law Office is here to help. Visit us at www. breedenfirm. com for practical advice, resources, or to book a consultation. Remember, when life gets messy, you don't have to face it alone.

It's going

We had different sponsors throughout the community to sponsor food and beverages and desserts. And for two hours we just we had about 125 people and in that time frame raised 12, 000, which was amazing because that was the first time we had. Had a gala and decided we wanted to kind of push our fundraising out more because there's so many businesses in this community.

Well off community, you know, great schools, you know, it's, this is just a great area. Johnson County is booming, but with that boom, there is a need,

Jonathan Breeden: right? No, there's no doubt. And you know, my office was happy to sponsor the hearts gala last year. We'll do it again this year as well. I also Donated some basketball tickets to the silent auction that somebody bought for Dr.

Yule, the principal at Cleveland Elementary School.

Mandy Williams: He's one of our fantastic partners.

Jonathan Breeden: He was great. He was so excited to go to the game. Unfortunately, it ended up being the NC State Clemson game with the tickets that I had auctioned off. And Clemson just beat NC State to a pulp. I mean, I think NC State may have lost that game by 25.

The so the, so what are I mean, so what are some of the different, I mean, I guess you talked about what are some of the numbers you're, if you're a business owner listening to this, is it a hundred dollars a sponsor kit for a year? I mean, you know what those are.

Mandy Williams: So the sponsorship kind of varies.

And like I said, we haven't. Done our official number of what a cost of a bag would be but I feel like last year We were around 350 a bag that could vary We haven't got our final numbers in but that would cover what it would cost to do a bag for a student for the whole Year, okay. And so last year at our gala, we had families split a bag and donate it together or Do quarters, you know for families went in together and did a bag or did a whole bag themselves and that covered The cost for that child for the entire school year.

That we can use to have bids and get some money out of it for, for our greater need, which is,

Jonathan Breeden: you know, and even though, you know, I've been very fortunate to be involved with Bad Pet Buddies for a while now, because I'm friends with some of the OGs, Bridget Strickland, you know, and Bridget Strickland, I go back to.

The bags and they went through that and her husband explained all of it. And even though I'd been involved for years, I didn't exactly know what was involved. So I would encourage anybody out there listening, if you. We want to get involved. You should but you should attend the gala because you'll learn so much about the people and what they're doing and what they're trying to do.

And it's just like, it's just everybody else. It's neighbors and friends and community members, and it's all volunteer. It's just regular people trying to meet a need in their community. Absolutely.

Mandy Williams: And our, our board, which is made up of Bridget, Bridget Strickland, Marjorie Hicks, Lynn Hellman, and Kelly McGonigal are all women that work full time, have families, and this is what we do on the side.

And I think all of us as parents just can't imagine a child not having food. And so the weekend bags, you know, they're built in a way that the child can prepare it themselves in the event. There's not a lot of help for them on the weekend. But our board really has worked hard. to make us more aware in the community, make the community more aware of our program.

Trying to communicate more with the schools and get involved with the PTAs just because the more help we can get from the schools, from the parents, from volunteers, the more awareness, the more able we are to identify a need and just to get more people involved, which will hopefully allow us to grab more schools as we get bigger, we can help.

And not just limit where we are. And that's just a slow process, but that's something that we were thankful this year and being able to adopt Cleveland middle because the need doesn't stop once they leave elementary school to the middle school. Right,

Sometimes they didn't, but I was always, you know, at least initially I was always surprised. And these aren't. Bad people. You know, they may have made, not made the decision, some of the decisions that you and I would have made, but I'm not in their shoes either. Right. I didn't have the background they had.

I wasn't raised by their parents. You know, and I do think that most people are doing the best they can do and are making the best decisions they can make. Would we like to make some better decisions? Yes. You know, it kind of is what it is and it's definitely not the kid's fault and definitely.

But most of the people are new and I think they would be surprised at the need. that is right here in this community. So if somebody wanted to get involved and reach out to y'all, what's the best way for them to do

Mandy Williams: that? The best way is to go to our Facebook page, which is Cleveland area backpack buddies.

You can message us directly on there. We've pinned some highlights like our signup genius that has our dates of our volunteering. Someone is. We'll respond very quickly to messages that come across on the Facebook page. We have a email address as well. It's Cleveland area, BPP at gmail. com. That.

We'll post it on our Facebook page That's the number one spot to get information.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, that's where I saw the need for the Christmas bags So we were able to help up step up and yeah, we try to help with some of that too. So the um Well, that's good. It will make sure that we include. The information for Cleveland or backpack buddies in the show notes down below.

We want to thank Mandy Williams for coming in and meeting with us. If you've enjoyed this best of Johnson County podcast today, be sure to like, or subscribe or follow it on wherever you. are watching this, whether it be YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcast or whatever, so that you'll be made aware of the future episodes.

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Thanks a lot for listening.

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