Karen McMahon and Joseph Schulte, Grand Forks, letter: Thanks for helping food drive succeed

GRAND FORKS — The students of the Nonprofit Leadership Student Association at UND would like to thank everyone who helped make the Back Pack Food Drive a success.

As students in the Nonprofit Leadership Program, we learn about and try to solve community problems as part of our education and training. In November, the association organized a food drive in support of the Back Pack Food Program in Grand Forks. This program provides food for weekends and holidays to children who are eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches. The Great Plains Food Bank piloted the program in the Fargo area with hopes that it would expand to help more children in North Dakota and Minnesota.

The association saw this as a chance to join forces with the community to help address a difficult issue.

As a result, we worked collaboratively with Northlands Rescue Mission, the organization administering the Back Pack Program with the Grand Forks Public Schools. And as soon as the drive began, it received an overwhelming amount of support from businesses and individuals in the community.

The Back Pack Food Program aims to serve 100 children a week with nonperishable food items that they can take home on weekends and holidays.

We are proud to live in a community that made this food drive such a success and are grateful for people’s generosity

Karen McMahon

Joseph Schulte

McMahon and Schulte are majoring in political science and minoring in nonprofit leadership at UND.

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