To end weekend hunger for children living in the Texas panhandle by providing a backpack filled with kid friendly snacks each Friday of the school year.

Our Vision

By 2015 every community in the Texas panhandle will have access to Snack Pak 4 Kids or similar program.

About Snack Pak 4 Kids

Snack Pak 4 Kids (SP4K) is a weekend backpack program that began serving ten children at Will Rogers Elementary on Labor Day Weekend September 2010. The program was started by a Bushland couple who discovered Amarillo was the largest city west of Dallas without a weekend backpack program. The program has grown to serve over 2700 students in nine school districts: Amarillo, Fritch, Hereford, Tulia, River Road, Walcott, Clarendon, Lockney,  and Bushland. Volunteers pack 10-12 nutritious snacks in plastic bags, deliver them to the school, and place them in backpacks to be discreetly sent home each Friday. The targeted students are those who live in food-insecure homes as identified by the school staff (counselor, nurse, principal, and teachers). SP4K provides a bag for each elementary student (as well as any siblings at home not old enough to attend school).

SP4K partnered with Panhandle Community Services in October 2010 to serve as the 501c3 organization. PCS provides the administrative and infrastructure support for the program including a building for administering the program . In November 2010 Baldwin Distribution partnered with SP4K to provide transportation of food from the Oklahoma Regional Food Bank in Oklahoma City. The Retired Senior Volunteer Program joined SP4K in December 2010 to coordinate all volunteer needs of the organization. The Hereford FED program joined with SP4K in December 2010 to begin delivering backpacks in Hereford. The program expanded to Canyon ISD in February 2011 as SP4K Canyon. Bushland ISD also joined the program in February 2011 and feeds children from all 3 campuses in Bushland.

The program has dramatically expanded in 2011 with the addition of a warehouse generously donated by Jim Austin, Charlie Graham and Jerry Webb. The new warehouse allows the program to serve more schools in Amarillo and the surrounding area. The expansion was also made possible because numerous churches have committed to sponsoring schools with financial and volunteer support to ensure these children have a weekend bag of food.