Lunch Means More with Blessings in a Backpack

Thursday marks the last Lunch on the Square presented by Downtown Fort Wayne and Edward Jones for 2024—another season of Fort Wayne’s finest food trucks, live music, communal gatherings, and Lunch Means More. This year, in Lunch on the Square’s 16th season, the event’s Lunch Means More initiative (which highlights and fundraises for a different, local nonprofit each year) benefited Blessings in a Backpack—an organization that’s really been making a name for itself lately.

Not familiar? Blessings in a Backpack—founded by Mike and Gretchen Gouloff back in 2007 —is on a mission to fight food insecurity at the local level. What started as a humble program that fed 300 students on weekends has now grown into a robust initiative with multiple programs aimed at providing sustenance and support to kids who need it. 

Here are some of the ways Blessings in a Backpack is making an impact:

• Student Supplemental Food Program: This program provides students with a take-home bag of meals for the weekend—all designed in partnership with nutritionists to make sure every kid is getting what their body needs. Over 114,000 Blessings Bags are distributed in Fort Wayne Community Schools on an annual basis, feeding over 3,000 children every weekend.

• “Believe Bags” Program: This program is focused more on tackling mental health since kids who experience food insecurity are also more likely to experience emotional hurdles. “Believe Bags” are provided to students quarterly, including special gifts and positive messages affirming children of their worth, ability, and dreams.

• Summer Feeding Program: This program, in partnership with the Allen County Public Library, ensures that students are able to have access to food from the Blessing in a Backpack program all summer long when school’s out of session.

• Triple Impact Program: In this latest program, the Blessings team is focused on incorporating locally produced food and supporting access to local food, including the purchasing of local food for their take-home bags and funding support for Pontiac Street Market to help eradicate the food desert on the southeast side of Fort Wayne.

With such a significant impact on our community’s youth, it’s no wonder that Blessings in a Backpack has been reverberating all over town.

“Being a small, local nonprofit that feeds 3,000 children every weekend, we see the incredible impact every dollar does for children in our community,” says Jama Ross, the Executive Director for Blessings in a Backpack. “Lunch Means More will not only raise awareness for food insecurity but also raise funds that will literally put food into the mouths of hundreds of children battling hunger right here in Fort Wayne.”

With Blessings in a Backpack as this year’s Lunch Means More recipient, your patronage at Lunch on the Square really does mean more—thanks to Barnes & Thornburg. Over the last 10 weeks, Barnes & Thornburg has matched the contributions of rotating guest food trucks and 15% of sales from each week’s featured food provider. That means if you chose to eat at that week’s featured food truck, you directly contributed to Barnes & Thornburg’s match to Blessings in a Backpack.

“Thanks to the weekly sales donated by food truck vendors and matching funds from our partner Barnes & Thornburg, Blessings in a Backpack received a $3,700 check today,” says Tamara Cummins, Events & Programs Manager for Downtown Fort Wayne. “This generous community effort will cover the cost of feeding nearly 1,200 children who might otherwise go hungry this weekend. Addressing food insecurity is crucial, and we’re proud to support Blessings in a Backpack’s mission.”

Want to learn more about Blessings in a Backpack, their mission, and how you can get involved? Visit their website.