Volunteers are the back bone of any successful program.   One example is the Fleming County Back Pack program.   This program was started in 2000, by the of Expanded Food Nutrition Education Program and Fleming County Extension Service.  The Back Pack Program continues to grow due to the support of local community volunteers partnering with the Fleming County Extension Service and the Expanded Food Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) assistant.    This program serves students in all four Elementary Schools in Fleming County, plus any siblings in Head Start, Middle and High School.  This past school year we served 72 families with 189 students with food for the weekend. All of our students received free meals at school; and this year the school served additional food through the Summer Feeding Program. The Extension staff purchases the food items which is 100% donated by the community, then volunteers visit the extension office weekly to pack the bags.   The goal is to provide two days’ worth of food that are  child-friendly, healthy food items such as, fruit cup, applesauce, raisins, macaroni and cheese, breakfast bars, fruit drink, and oatmeal.
The volunteers are retired school teachers who were looking for a way to stay involved with the schools.  They come every Wednesday to pack the bags, they do everything from writing the families names on the bags to cleaning up.  An additional set of volunteers from a local church also help load the bags for deliver them to the four elementary schools.  This past year, a new food pantry ran by local churches asked to handle all the backpacks for the school in their area.  The Hillsboro Food Pantry, purchases food, and bags and delivers back packs to the school.  
This program is now under the direction of an advisory council.  The members oversee the operation of this program.  There is a total of 15 volunteers that assist the Fleming County Extension service on this program.   Each volunteer states they do this for the children and are very passionate about the program.