There Are Children Going to Bed Hungry at Night Right Here in Middletown. 'Backpack Crew' Wants You to Help

Every Friday morning, Suzanne Dice struggles to drive her SUV to an elementary school in Middletown.

“It’s a big truck, and it’s just completely packed, floor to roof. There’s no extra space for anything else,” the mother of three says.

Packed into every nook and cranny of her oversized vehicle is something you wouldn’t expect to see: backpacks. What’s inside these backpacks, however, saves struggling families in Middletown every weekend of the year now for almost two years.

Suzanne Dice runs a program called ”The Backpack Crew,” with her husband and three children, right out of their home. Each backpack, which Dice states numbers around twenty-five currently, is filled with enough food for each family to survive over the weekend with. It’s a program that is done anonymously, to protect the pride of struggling families affected by Superstorm Sandy in one Middletown school system, which Dice declines to name.

Residents of Middletown, the “biggest small town in New Jersey”, take pride in the affluent shopping that can be found, and the manicured lawns and carefully maintained landscaping of homes and businesses alike throughout the township. The reality, however, is that there are still families who are essentially homeless two years later from Sandy, and as time passes, are being overlooked and pushed to the back burner, if you will, of people’s thoughts and concerns, as election season looms, and the holiday season rapidly approaches. To have anywhere from twenty to forty families in just one elementary school needing help to feed children on the weekends when there is no school lunch provided is a frightening, shocking thought to Dice. Being in an area of middle to upper class income families, where there is a keeping-up-with-the-Jones mentality made Dice and her husband realize that there were most likely many more people needing help feeding their children than speak up and ask for assistance.

“We put the Backpack Crew together, not knowing if people here would accept the help, because of their pride, and the issue of such a large scale between upper and lower class right here in Middletown,” Dice says. Thinking of how humiliating it might be for a child to carry food from the school back to home, in front of all of their not-so-understanding peers, Dice came up with an anonymous system. The nurse of the unnamed elementary school is the only person with the list of families who have signed up to received free food every weekend.

Starting on Wednesday, Dice and her three children, who she states do not attend the school, along with her work-from-home investor husband Keith, begin putting food into the backpacks, based on the anonymous list, which tells them how many members are in each family and the ages of each person they are feeding. This way, Dice knows how many boxes of mac-and-cheese, or granola bars and other snacks, are needed in each pack.

Families that sign up with the program list the number and ages of members in their household, and also if there are any food allergies, but otherwise Dice says she chooses general food products that are healthy, and she packs enough food for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks to last a family two days. There are no glass containers, for the safety of the child bringing the backpack home on the bus.

By Friday morning, the family has finished putting together each backpack, which are numbered to coincide with the anonymous list. Dice then sets off with her husband to unload the backpacks at the nurse’s office early Friday mornings. Students are then able to retrieve their numbered backpack, and bring food home to their families without anyone ever knowing or having the chance to shame or taunt the student and family needing assistance. The backpacks are then simply dropped back in the nurse’s office quietly and privately by the student, without other kids at school noticing and having the chance to possibly tease or ridicule the student, in the sometimes cruel and taunting ways that kids bully one another.

It’s a concept that does cause shame, however- to anyone aware of the program, who realizes how difficult it must be to struggle in an area where so many families are doing well, or well enough to send their child to school appearing to be financially well-off. This is an era when children are ostracized now more than ever for the brand of clothing they wear, or the type of cell phone they have, and many forget about the families still displaced two years later from Hurricane Sandy.

“There are families, neighbors, kids your children play with, who still are not back in their homes, right here in Middletown Township,” Dice says. “You could be interacting with someone daily here, and have no idea that they are struggling to eat, or feed their families.”

Dice feels grateful for her husband’s job, which provides enough security for her family to be able to do something for others, she says.

“Everyone has a responsibility to help one another, if you are able to. There’s no excuse not to help your neighbors, and members of your own community.” Dice says.

It was while sitting in church one day, a year after Hurricane Sandy, when Dice and her husband had the idea to help children in the school systems. She says a member of the church asked for prayers for a Middletown family, who were still displaced from the storm, and struggling to feed their children. Dice says her husband and her, initially shocked at the thought of Middletown children going hungry at night, realized very quickly that they could do something simple to help several families.

In October of 2013, right after back-to-school products went on sale, Dice approached local chain stores in the hopes of receiving backpacks that hadn’t sold. When she was turned down by several large stores, she decided to purchase the 40 backpacks herself.

Then came the food. At first, the Dice family began the lengthy paperwork to have their Backpack Crew idea become a non-profit charity recognized and able to be considered for tax write-off purposes, in the hopes that more people would help donate food or monetarily to the cause. They quickly became discouraged by the government process, which would have taken “around nine months” to, and decided to simply run the program themselves, out of their own pockets. Their church, Red Bank United Methodist Church on Broad Street, jumped into action with the family, and adopted the idea as one of their own ministries, allowing it to finally have non-profit status for those wishing to donate with a tax write-off. The church also ran a food pantry to add to the food supply for the backpacks.

Dice credits other local groups with helping the Backpack Crew as well. The Ladies Auxiliary hold a food drive at their weekly bingo games at the VFW, which provides more food for the backpacks.

Dice says this still isn’t enough. Although the numbers fluctuate as families get back on their feet, and back into their Sandy-damaged homes, or families move away from the area, Dice says that the number of families needing assistance is consistently around 25 to 30 in number.

“If there are that many families struggling just in one school in Middletown, imagine how many there actually are in this area,” Dice says.

She hopes to expand the Backpack Crew to other schools in the area, and even beyond in the future. For now, word of mouth is all she can wish for to keep the program running in the one elementary school, with food donations from the public.

To find out how you can get involved and help The Backpack Crew program continue- check out their Facebook page at
http://www.facebook.com/thebackpackcrew or by email at backpackcrewnj@gmail.com. You can also visit their website at: www.backpackcrew.com.