Putting more than books in backpacks to enhance learning in North Dakota

Community News

Mandan, North Dakota, Foundation
(far left) Employee volunteers Danielle Schaffner and Connie Miller from Marathon Petroleum’s Mandan refinery prepare plastic bags with food items to later be placed inside backpacks for students in need to take home on weekends.
  • The United Way chapter in the Bismarck-Mandan, North Dakota, area is helping bridge nutritional gaps for local children facing hunger.
  • A chapter program provides backpacks of food for students who receive free and reduced-cost school lunches to take home on weekends when they may lose access to regular meals.
  • Employee volunteers from Marathon Petroleum’s Mandan refinery recently supported the program over a three-day period, preparing enough backpacks for over 1,600 students.

While thousands of students in need in the Bismarck-Mandan, North Dakota, area qualify for free and reduced-cost school lunches during the week, many of them lose access to regular meals on weekends. The Missouri Slope Areawide United Way cites this reality as motivation for its backpack program, which provides backpacks of food for students to take home on weekends during the school year.

(L-R) Heather Miller, Craig Madsen, Dereck Del Valle, and Zach Glueckert were among the 30 employee volunteers from Marathon Petroleum’s Mandan refinery who took part in the food packing effort during a three-day period.

Recently, about 30 employee volunteers from Marathon Petroleum Corporation’s (MPC) Mandan refinery supported the backpack program over a three-day period. They stacked nonperishable food in a central location, sorted and packed it, and then delivered full backpacks to schools for counselors to distribute.

“By taking hunger off the list of obstacles for these kids, our hope is they can start their school week ready to learn.”

“It is humbling to see co-workers coming together for a common goal – to feed our local children who need it most,” said the United Way chapter’s Community Engagement Coordinator Laura Duppong. “As a result, over 1,600 kids went home with backpacks of food.” 

The backpacks contain enough food to supply meals from Friday evening through Sunday evening. They include items such as cereal, snack bars, fruit cups and microwaveable stew. Empty backpacks are returned to be re-used in the United Way program. As additional support, MPC provided Missouri Slope Areawide United Way a grant for $8,000 to help cover the cost of food.

Containers with plastic bags of food are lined up before the final packing stage when they were placed inside backpacks for delivery to local schools.

“Kids are at risk of going hungry over the weekend and then coming to school on Monday distracted from having not eaten,” said Advanced Project Controls Specialist Cathy Schweitzer, who organized MPC’s volunteer effort as the refinery’s Women’s employee network chapter Outreach Coordinator. “By taking hunger off the list of obstacles for these kids, our hope is they can start their school week ready to learn.”

Schweitzer added that she hopes the backpack program becomes a permanent piece of the refinery’s ongoing community involvement because the need for help isn’t likely to go away.

“We heard from a school representative that the only food some families have for the week comes from the school,” she said. “Ideally, we’d like to partner with the backpack program every fall.”

The Mandan refinery’s 30 employee volunteers worked in phases over three days to stack, sort and pack food items that would provide weekend meals for students in need.
Hundreds of boxes of non-perishable food items were required to assemble backpacks of food that supplied a weekend’s worth of meals for over 1,600 students.