We added a new school for the fall!

Hello everyone!
We have been getting in a steady stream of food and want to thank all of you who are dropping off food! We are still in need of Chef Boyardee or soup if you would like to help.   It's so exciting to go to Liz's and see all the food stacked up and needing to be added to the shelves!  Thank you!

We have also added another school for the fall!  We will be helping approximately 20 new children at this Ashburn school starting in August when school begins!  We are excited about being able to help in another school!  Thank you to Sunita for passing our name along to the counselor who was looking to start a program at her school!  If any of you know of a need for a weekend backpack program in your school please feel free to have your counselor contact us!

Thanks!  Have a great week!
Jill 

new need for food to finish the backpack program for this school year

Hello!

We are coming to the end of the school year and I would like to update you on our backpack program.  We were up to 99 backpacks a week within the past few weeks helping students that attend 7 schools in our area. L2F is feeding the equivalent of four classrooms of children! Some families have gotten back on their feet and have been able to come off the program! We are so glad to hear this. 
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There are five weeks remaining in the school year and we need your help to finish it out.  Liz and I looked at our food this morning and this is what we need:

130 Applesauce
200 Chef Boyardee or soup
20 Jelly in plastic containers please
550 Juice bags or juice boxes (100% juice please)
115 Mac n cheese boxes or easy mac packets or cups
20 Hunts canned spaghetti sauce in a metal can

These are the specific items we need. It may seem odd that I am telling you the packaging but it is important in our program to how we pack it for the kids. 

Please consider donating your used backpacks to L2F if you are done with them at the end of the school year. Please also tell your friends to save them for our program.  We are desperately low on them.

You can bring the food to 21617 Merion St in Ashburn.  There is a box on the porch for donations.

Thank you so much for helping and being a part of L2F!  You are feeding kids almost 400 meals a weekend right now!
Thank you!
Jill

A video about what goes into 96 backpacks every week for the backpack program.

We are giving out 96 backpacks a week now!  I am amazed.  When we started the program we used to look at the number 100 and think that was a lot to do every week.  We started with 5 then 15 then 35 at the beginning of this year.  Now we are at 96 and still growing!  

We told the counselors when we started, we will just see where it takes us and continue as long as we can get in the donations needed to keep the program going.  You continually amaze me with your support of this.  Not in a way that I didn't think you had the hearts for it but you take what I thought we could do and multiply it even more!  

We have filled Liz and Mike's basement every week with food for a year now.  We are getting bigger and have been looking for another space to work in and now another couple have offered space in their house to store more food so we can continue expanding.  Thank you Justin and April!  Here is Liz, our "Backpack Queen", explaining a little about what we put in the bags.

Feed more kids!  That's what that means!  We can feed more kids.  A good way to think about the amount of children we feed every weekend is to imagine four classrooms full of children.  That is what you provide.  You feed four classrooms of children every weekend.  Volunteers come every wednesday to Liz's house and carry in food from deliveries, sort it, date it and restock the shelves.  They then label and fill all the bags that need to go out on Thursday to the schools.  They load up all the backpacks and deliver them to our local schools by noon on Friday so the children can take them home.  Then we start the next week.

Right now we are in need of:
-pudding
-canned chicken
-soup
-simply fruit snacks
-crackers

Thank you for being a part of this!
Jill :)

Zumba

Zumba!

Thanks to Willie and Ty Diggs for hosting a Zumba food drive event at Dulles Sportsplex for L2F. We had a great time doing Zumba for 2 hours to raise food for the Backpack program. I had always wanted to try Zumba and Ty is a really fun teacher who made it fun and so easy to follow along! We hope to do another one in the future.

Willie also adopted one of our L2F families that needed Christmas presents. He donated, wrapped and delivered presents for a family with 6 children. Thank you so much for your generosity Willie and Ty!

Thanksgiving Baskets

We Delivered Thanksgiving Baskets to 58 Families!

We can't thank you enough for the food and time you all donated to our Thanksgiving Deliveries! Last year we gave baskets to 17 families and my goal was to double that but we delivered 58! People were giving their time to buy, assemble and deliver baskets the weekend before Thanksgiving and we were able to do so much more with all of you helping. We had middle school volunteers assembling them and getting them ready to take out which really helped.

We have lots of thanks to pass along to you from the families who received them. Our volunteers did a wonderful job connecting and showing love to families in need in our area.

Thank you again so much!

Jill

More backpacks!

Today I was driving around town getting my Halloween candy and doing errands when I got a call from a friend at school requesting more backpacks. 

All of a sudden I got such a big dose of perspective. There are kids that don't have food. No food! We get irritable if we miss a snack or meal and these kids go through the weekend waiting for Monday to come so they can eat. Wow. 

I do this every week so yes, I know about it, but it hit deeper in my brain and heart today. No food.  We received at least three more today to put the number at 43 and we think more are coming next week.

This Sunday we will be at the Giant grocery stores in Ashburn from 10:30-noon collecting food for the backpack program as a part of our Service Sunday at J10 church.  Last time we collected about $1500 worth of food in 2 hours and we can't thank you all and Giant stores enough!  Please come out and help children in need in Ashburn eat a meal.  These 40 kids went to the backpacks 280 times for food last weekend. 

Thank you for helping and being a part of L2F!
Jill

We delivered!

Melanie's couch finally gets a new home!

Hello everyone! We have been delivering all the household items and furniture that you all have been donating for the mother and son who lost their apartment in a fire.  The mother had just gotten settled when her water heater exploded so her friend and coworkers emailed out that they needed help!

You all have responded and I wanted to let you know that we delivered a couch, bed, dining table and chairs,television, 2 dressers, pots, pans, kitchen utensils, boys bicycle and other items are going to be delivered this week.  They have a new apartment and all the goods to fill it!

Thank you to all of you who put your time and effort in on watching all the emails that went back and forth with this delivery!  It took a lot to coordinate and I appreciate everyone's patience and hard work on this!  We have awesome volunteers!  Thanks to Carl, Shane, John, Stacy, Josh, Bill, Otho and Rob. We couldn't do this without such a great delivery team!