CALF_News_February_March_2020

31 CALF News • February | March 2020 • www.calfnews.net S nack Pak 4 Kids™ just keeps growing. From Dyron Howell’s kitchen table idea to provide healthy snacks to 10 kids, to a delicious dream that now helps 24,000-plus food-inse- cure kids have plenty of weekend protein before returning to school on Monday, Howell and his Snack Pak platform are glowing with success. For several years, thousands of volun- teers, including many feedyard and food processor employees and owners from across the Amarillo and Texas Panhan- dle area, have stuffed thousands of Snack Paks weekly. These snacks include beef sticks, fairlife® milk, Kellogg’s cereal and vari- ous other easy-to-open items. There’s no cooking needed. Kids are sent home with them Fridays of each week. They have food for the weekend. The enthusiasm grows annually among volunteers. They know the benefit they’re providing to kids in their hometowns. “Kids can't learn if they’re hungry,” Howell expounds, citing the growing need to prevent youngsters from return- ing to school on Mondays too hungry to think about their studies. Snack Pak 4 Kids aims to feed those kids. It won't settle for anything less. The plan started in Amarillo in 2010, when Dyron and his wife, Kelly, provided 10 kids from a local school with bags of food on Friday to get them through the weekend. Now, with an army of volunteers from all walks, the program provides Snack Paks of healthy snacks for some 24,000 kids in six states. “We feed over 20,000 kids across Texas every week,” Dyron says.“Most are in the Amarillo-Panhandle area. But we’re also helping San Antonio and Austin, as well as cities and towns in Kansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico.” Recently, the Snack Pak helped local programs expand in Washington State and South Carolina. And in January, the Loveland, Colo., area north of Denver saw more than 500 kids receive weekend backpacks that include protein-packed beef sticks thanks to Five Rivers Cattle Feeding and Loveland Rotary KidsPak.” Cattle and other food producers and processors have been huge supporters of Snack Pak 4 Kids. Its partners include Cactus Feeders, Five Rivers Cattle Feed- ing (which coordinated the Loveland expansion), MWI/Micro, Cargill, Elanco, Caviness, Texas Cattle Feeders Associa- tion, Tyson, Select Milk Producers, fair- life, Southwest Dairy Farmers, Hillmar Cheese and Labatt Food Service. LEFT: Dyron Howell helps guide volunteers in their evening’s chore – packing 5,000 or more Snack Paks in less than an hour. RIGHT: Typical Snack Pak crowd of volunteers filling bags with brand-name snacks for kids over the weekend. Photos by Brian Barrett Beef Protein Part of Weekend Meal Packs Smaller companies, including Clint & Son’s Beef Jerky in White Deer, Texas, have also been contributors. Snack Pak has contracted with Clint & Sons to provide premium 100 percent beef sticks made with chuck roast and brisket only. “We launched our own brand of beef stick in 2017,” Howell says.“It was in conjunction with our agricultural part- nerships like Cactus Feeders, Caviness Beef Packers, Elanco, Cargill, TCFA, Nutra Blend, MWI, Hi-Pro Feeds, Friona Industries and Legacy Farms. “Cactus has also helped spread Snack Pak to cities with their operations in South Carolina.We’re grateful to them, our other partners and the more than 5,000 volun- teers who make this dream possible.” Food giants like Kellogg’s, PepsiCo, Smucker’s, Knouse Foods, Kraft-Heinz and Campbell’s are also Snack Pak part- ners. All snacks are quality brands. While providing tasty, nutritious snacks to kids in their communities, volunteers and sponsors also help promote By Larry Stalcup Contributing Editor Snack Pak 4 Kids ™ Grows For more on Snack Pak 4 Kids and how you can help, go to www.sp4k.org Continued on page 32 