Thanks to HELP Initiative, backpack meals help kids in distress

October 10, 2024

Just over three months ago, HELP Initiative, Inc., a Dover-based non-profit, launched Food-ON, a new initiative to assist law enforcement agencies responding to domestic violence calls. Funded by a Criminal Justice Council grant, HELP purchased backpack meals – bags of kid-friendly, self-stable, nutritious food — from the Food Bank of Delaware.

Charles T. Kistler serves as the agency’s executive director, with Harold E. Stafford working as Government Relations Director. A staff of 15, including some fluent in Spanish and Haitian-Creole languages, literally take to the streets, talking to neighbors about little things that could have a big impact on bettering their lives.

One of those things are the meals for children – or pouches of food distributed through schools as weekend meals to children living with food insecurity. Thanks to the HELP Food-ON program, those bags also provide food for hungry children, plus ease some tension for police officers during a volatile situation.

Food-ON, as the project is called, launched on July 22, 2024. Here’s how it works: participating law enforcement agencies get duffel bags packed with a few meals. The bags are placed in police vehicles, and in order to track distribution, officers are asked to tag a QR code to identify and map where the food goes.

Since the program started, seven law enforcement agencies have been outfitted with Go-Bags and food inventory. Eighty food pouches have been provided to hungry children, and 475 food pouches have been provided to agencies to sustain the effort, according to HELP’s data.

The system includes a GIS dashboard “so we can identify food deserts in the state of Delaware,” noted Kistler, adding that the food distribution complements the agency’s other programs.

Since 2016, HELP Initiative, Inc. has committed to a boots-on-the-ground effort to improve the quality of life for residents in areas with a high crime rate; for example, they also provide lightbulbs for exterior lighting, then monitor the impact on neighborhood crime through data collection.

“It’s a real holistic approach,” said Kistler.

To learn more about the HELP Initiative, click here.