News
How the Program Works
We’ve Got Your Back is a weekend nutrition program created by Giving Children Hope for students in the Orange County Unified School District who have been identified as homeless under the McKinney-Vento act.
These children also take part in the free and reduced lunch program at their schools. For most of these children, the school cafeteria is their primary source of nutrition. Many return home on Friday to a household without food. This is where Giving Children Hope and the Orange County Unified School District partner together to alleviate hunger among our children in Orange County.
Giving Children Hope distributes backpacks weekly to elementary schools. There, a site coordinator distributes each backpack confidentially to every student in the program. This continues throughout the entire school year. The program is presented to the children as a Weekend Nutrition Club, instead of the “We’ve Got Your Back” program. Our first priority is to maintain and uphold the dignity and self-esteem of the children. Students in the weekend nutrition club will receive a weekly activity sheet that will pertain to nutrition. This activity sheet is returned every week in each backpack and is the students’ responsibility. Children who return their activity sheets will be rewarded. With the assistance of a school site coordinator from your school, the distribution of backpacks and the collection of empty ones can be facilitated in a simple and time efficient manner.
Supporting Hope
On Friday, December 5, President and CEO, John Ditty and We’ve Got Your Back program coordinator, Elizabeth Saldaña joined the Orange Rotary Club in continuing Rotary tradition by taking Project Hope students Christmas shopping for their family members.
Everyone from the Orange Rotary, including member John Ditty, were invited on Friday to volunteer their time to help students shop for their family members. Students shopped for an hour at Target and headed back to the school to wrap their gifts and eat pizza.
Project Hope provides accredited schooling for homeless children and children from families living in motels. Teaching is provided by the Orange County School Department. Before and after school programming is provided by the Central Orange County YWCA.
Most Project Hope students are a part of the We’ve Got Your Back program, our local program which provides backpacks full of nutritious food for Orange County children that have been identified as homeless and having food insecurity.
