It’s been more than 15 years since a meeting between former United Way of Northeastern Minnesota (UWNEMN) executive director Shelley Valentini and former Mesabi East school nurse Shelly Whiting was continually interrupted by students complaining of stomach aches.
“Every Monday that happened,” Whiting recalled. “My first question was always, ‘When is the last time you ate?’”
Following the meeting, Valentini called Whiting and said UWNEMN wanted to pilot a program to help prevent those Monday stomach aches.
Fast forward to 2025, and UWNEMN’s Buddy Backpacks are now available in every school across the Iron Range and Koochiching County. Since its inception, local donors and volunteers have united to pack and deliver more than 300,000 “Buddy Backpacks” - bags of food with shelf-stable, child-friendly, nutritious food items intended for breakfast, lunch, and dinners over the weekend.
Buddy Backpacks go home with students who are likely to rely on school meals. During the school year, students receive the bags of food before weekends and holiday breaks to fill the meal gaps. In recent years, Buddy Backpacks have also become available at all of UWNEMN’s Meet Up and Chow Down free summer lunch sites.
Buddy Backpacks was first piloted at Mesabi East in 2010 and made available to all schools in UWNEMN’s service area in 2011. That first year, Whiting called families she thought might benefit and asked teachers to start paying attention to which students were showing signs of hunger. It was difficult to tell who needed it most, short of going into students’ homes, she said.
“The struggle is private,” she said. “People don’t want anyone to know. Families don’t talk about it or ask about it. We had to ask them.”
Initially, parents were on guard. Concerns about children’s privacy and stigma were taken seriously; Buddy Backpacks enrollment was made to be – and remains – anonymous to UWNEMN staff and volunteers.
Today, school staff report children enrolled in Buddy Backpacks are more likely to attend school on Buddy Backpacks days, and most recent program impact surveys indicate that students are comforted by the meal kits.
“It offers them hope and encouragement,” said Colleen Elhard, Northome School Behavioral Health. “Lets them know someone sees their need and wants to help.”
As opposed to making students feel singled out, Whiting noted, Buddy Backpacks “makes them feel like everyone else because they’re able to take out a snack at snack time, too.”
While families have since become more comfortable with the program, Whiting said she has never witnessed anyone “abuse” the program.
“If they don’t need the food anymore, they let us know,” Whiting said. As a result, program numbers fluctuate throughout the year.
In the pilot year, 303 children received Buddy Backpacks. This school year, 900 students are currently enrolled in the program. At its highest, enrollment reached nearly 1,500.
At Mesabi East, very few Buddy Backpacks recipients lived in single child households.
“Most have two to six kids at home,” Whiting said. “…Always working but still struggling – because of the size of their family, illness, divorce, or an emergency.”
Whiting attributes Buddy Backpacks growth to UWNEMN’s willingness to listen and accommodate.
“They want to do it right,” she said. “United Way finds a need and then finds a way to fill that need – but not only that, they find a way to make it easy.
They didn’t do a food drive and bring in boxes. They made bags we could hand out. Then they listened to feedback and found ways to make them even easier to hand out.”
The first year of Buddy Backpacks, every box was a different size.
“It sounds so silly, but having them all one size made a difference,” she said. “They were consistent to store and to carry.”
The box dimensions were custom-made by primary (and at the time, only) Buddy Backpacks volunteer delivery driver, Ray Erspamer, who calculated the size based to maximize the space in his van.
Erspamer has traveled thousands of miles across the Iron Range each school year delivering Buddy Backpacks.
“Thanks goodness he likes to drive,” laughed his wife, Debbie.
While reflecting on his experiences, he lifted his United Way hat and said, “this is what gets me into every school to make deliveries.”
Koochiching County deliveries are made possible through a partnership with Minnesota Industries and more local volunteers.
Many aspects of Buddy Backpacks have changed in the years since the program was first piloted. From box sizes to food items – even the packing location moved from Chisholm City Hall to the Range Center to UWNEMN’s new building in Chisholm. The organization’s move was largely predicated by the need for a Buddy Backpacks storage and packing space.
“What hasn’t changed once is our commitment to filling that need Shelley first identified more than 15 years ago,” said UWNEMN Executive Director Erin Shay. “As an organization working across multiple sectors in hopes of helping people and communities thrive, making sure all our local children are fed is absolutely step one.
Proper childhood nutrition provides a foundation that is proven to improve educational outcomes and health outcomes, and we believe the program has changed course for hundreds of children across our region.”
Indeed, Whiting said she saw a decline in those Monday morning visits as the program grew.
The first students to ever receive Buddy Backpacks have since graduated. UWNEMN recently put out an open call to young adults who received Buddy Backpacks as students, looking for their feedback on the program.
“Due to the anonymity of the program, we have to hope some graduates will be willing to share their thoughts with us,” said UWNEMN Community Impact Coordinator Michelle Lampton. “Their adult perspective on the difference Buddy Backpacks made for them would be incredible.”
The anonymity – or “silent help” – is part of what makes Buddy Backpacks special, Whiting said.
“You’ll never know how many kids you actually helped,” she said, noting that any extra food due to enrollment changes always went directly to hungry children.
Not long after Buddy Backpacks was implemented regionwide, UWNEMN responded to school, donor, and volunteer feedback by adding hygiene kits to the program. Today, enrolled students receive age-appropriate hygiene items before winter and summer break.
New this year, the organization is proud to have collaborated with local grocers to provide monthly $5 Produce Passes to enrolled students.
“These ideas could never become reality without donor and volunteer support,” Shay said. “Each evolution of the program makes it more holistic and shows that our region really is united behind our next generation.”
Make a year-end gift in support of Buddy Backpacks
The deadline for charitable gifts to be eligible for 2025 tax deduction is December 31, 2025.