{"id":798465,"date":"2019-08-12T18:15:10","date_gmt":"2019-08-13T00:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=369830"},"modified":"2019-08-12T18:15:10","modified_gmt":"2019-08-13T00:15:10","slug":"smart-bellies-works-with-summit-county-schools-to-make-sure-young-children-dont-go-hungry-on-the-weekends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/smart-bellies-works-with-summit-county-schools-to-make-sure-young-children-dont-go-hungry-on-the-weekends\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart Bellies works with Summit County schools to make sure young children don\u2019t go hungry on the weekends"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A volunteer brings backpacks to a Summit County elementary school.<\/strong>
Photo courtesy of Smart Bellies.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

When Sarah Schmidt and Margaret Sheehe heard about a need for food security among elementary students in Summit County, they knew they had the experience and the drive needed to act.<\/p>\n

The two were skiing at Copper Mountain one day when they saw a Facebook post about a school that was struggling to pay for meals.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone posted that one of the schools didn\u2019t have enough money to pay for kids\u2019 lunches or something like that. \u2026 I thought, \u2018Oh, I wonder if Summit County has a backpack program,\u2019\u201d Schmidt said.<\/p>\n

Schmidt and Sheehe both had a background in nonprofit work \u2014 Schmidt happened to be working at a nonprofit in Denver that gave backpacks full of food to underprivileged students to take home during the weekend. The two evaluated the local mountain communities and found Summit County had a need for increased food security. They created Smart Bellies<\/a> to provide students and their families with a backpack full of breakfasts, lunches and snacks for the weekend. <\/p>\n

While the Summit School District provides a free and reduced meal program, students who are food insecure often struggle during the weekend. Programs that give these students food have been largely successful across the country. The Feeding America BackPack Program<\/a>, the largest of this type of program, feeds more than 450,000 children every week. <\/p>\n

\u201cNeither of us lived in Summit County when we began this. We\u2019re both living there now, but we had asked around to some of the other counties to see where there was no program and where there was need, and Summit and Park county popped up as a good start. We reached out to some schools, and Frisco Elementary was our first school,\u201d Sheehe said.<\/p>\n

Smart Bellies operates by shopping for food, aiming for a $5 budget per backpack and then packing and delivering them to elementary schools on Fridays so students can take them home for the weekend. <\/p>\n

The work to fill the backpacks is done by Schmidt, Sheehe and community volunteers, and it is funded by donations and grants, including from Breckenridge Grand Vacations and The Summit Foundation for the 2019-20 school year. Despite the $5 budget, Schmidt and Sheehe try to make the snacks and meals as nutritious as possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe try to make it pretty healthy. It\u2019s definitely a tricky situation. We shop up in the mountains for the most part, but we have to do some of our shopping in Denver just because we\u2019re doing kid-friendly and as nutritious as we can,\u201d Sheehe said.<\/p>\n

The duo try to strike that balance by buying natural peanut butter for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and fruit cups instead of chips or pretzels. <\/p>\n

Smart Bellies began serving the students of Frisco Elementary School, Summit Cove Elementary School, Upper Blue Elementary School and Breckenridge Elementary School in September 2018. This year, they are expanding to include Dillon Valley Elementary School and Silverthorne Elementary School, with hopes to include Park County in 2020. <\/p>\n

Before Smart Bellies began, Whitney Smith, a third-grade teacher at Frisco Elementary School, and her teaching partner recognized the need for expanded food programs, which is how the partnership started. <\/p>\n

\u201cTeachers spend so much time with these kiddos, and you see what they\u2019re bringing or not bringing for snack, and you see them when you have lunch duty, what they\u2019re lunches look like,\u201d Smith said. \u201cIt was interesting because I think everybody knew that there were people that would benefit from some extra food.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smart Bellies started as a weekend food program but expanded to meet other needs, including placing snacks in classrooms for students who didn\u2019t bring their own and providing holiday meals for students\u2019 families.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that they don\u2019t have to worry or feel sad if they don\u2019t have a snack \u2026 maybe they can focus on socializing with friends at snack or focus on what they\u2019re going to do next or focus on a project or whatever it is without having to worry about what they\u2019re going to eat next or if they have a lunch,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

Schmidt and Sheehe don\u2019t get to meet the students they help, but they still hear from the teachers, school faculty and even students that they\u2019re making a difference.<\/p>\n

\u201cNonprofits that work with kids, I think, are something special because kids don\u2019t really have a choice in the situation they\u2019re in. And to be able to help them and directly give them food to take home is a really cool thing,\u201d Schmidt said. <\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A volunteer brings backpacks to a Summit County elementary school.Photo courtesy of Smart Bellies. When Sarah Schmidt and Margaret Sheehe heard about a need for food security among elementary students in Summit County, they knew they had the experience and the drive needed to act. The two were skiing at Copper Mountain one day when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-798465","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 01:26:38","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}