Taking Care of Orange County’s Homeless Children

According to the Weingart Institute, the second highest rate of homelessness in the United States is in Orange County. The institute adds that of the homeless population, 70% are families with children and 50% of the children are younger than 10 years old.

Intro We’ve Got Your Back:

“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.

Our Goal:

To meet the needs of children in Orange County identified as homeless by continuously providing a stable and nutritious source of food to carry home during the weekends along with providing them with nutritional education.

In the News..

The Today Show aired the segment Middle Class Misery: More Families Headed to Food Banks on May 26, 2008 about how more middle class families are struggling to buy groceries and end up at food banks to get by, and how children are hoarding their free/reduced lunches at school to bring homes as food for their families.

Check out the “We’ve Got Your Back” video and see what we’re doing to help the homeless children of Orange County:

Stories About Children in the We’ve Got Your Back Program

Read About “Carly”

Just last week 7 year old “Carly” stated to her teacher that she was hungry. “Carly” is a part of the free and reduced lunch program that provides breakfast and lunches to qualifying children during the school week. What was discovered was that “Carly” had not been eating her lunches but hoarding them in her bag. She was sent to the school nurse who pushed for an explanation as to why “Carly” was hungry and yet not eating the food provided to her. After some time the nurse came to find out that “Carly” did not have much food in her home and was bringing the food provided at school home to last through the weekends and share with her family.

“Carly” is being added on to our We’ve Got Your Back program which addresses this very issue. There are over 11,000 homeless children in our own county and our goal is to have each one cared for through the provision of nutritional food.

Sponsoring a Child like “Carly”

Sponsoring a child or a classroom, is a way in which one can get involved in giving a local child hope. For $240 per year, one child can have the security of receiving a backpack filled with food at the end of each week. Contact our offices at 714-523-4454 or email Elizabeth Saldana at esaldana@godiad.org for more information on sponsoring a child.

Get Involved in “We’ve Got Your Back”

- Make a monetary contribution to help support the Backpack Program

- Sponsor a Child

- Talk to your school, church, and/or service club to see if they would like to sponsor a classroom in Orange County to be enrolled in the program

- Volunteer at Giving Children Hope packing backpacks, sorting food, and/or writing notes to children enrolled in the program

To learn more about “We’ve Got Your Back,” and the many ways you can get involved, please contact our Volunteer Coordinator at 714-523-4454 x. 130

We’ve Got Your Back News

• Walking with Hope Raises $12,000 for Orange County’s hungry Children

• Walking with Hope 5k Walk

• We’ve Got Your Back Toy Drive

• Get Involved in We’ve Got Your Back

• Hunger Statistics Among Children in Orange County