During the school year, students at our partner schools eat two meals a day at school. Weekends are the gap. In rural Wisconsin and on the northern plains, the nearest full grocery store can be an hour’s drive, work is seasonal, and local food systems are still being rebuilt after decades of federal policy that dismantled them. Families know what their children need. The barrier is access.
Running Strong’s School Food programs started because Native educators and community leaders told us where that gap was and asked us to help close it. Each Friday, students take home a bag of shelf-stable food with enough for a family of four through the weekend. This school year, we are supporting three school communities in Wisconsin and South Dakota.
Keshena Primary School on the Menominee Indian Reservation in Keshena, Wisconsin, is our largest site. Since our partnership started over a decade ago, thousands of students have been able to take a bag of food home each week, and school staff have adjusted the contents over time to match what families use.
The Bowler School District in north-central Wisconsin joins us this year. Don King, a Dreamstarter teacher there, identified the need at his school and brought it to us. Bowler serves students from the town of Bowler, from farm families, and from the Stockbridge-Munsee and Menominee communities nearby, across a rural area with limited economic resources. Native students receive priority in distribution, and bags are available to any student in the district. Families identify themselves and sign up directly. Staff asked for a mix that covers full meals rather than snacks alone: oatmeal and dry cereal, breakfast bars, soups and canned meals, pasta and sauce, mac and cheese, tuna and chicken pouches, vegetables, fruit cups, mashed potato pouches, peanut butter and jelly.
At the Wakpala School on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Reservation in South Dakota, the program works differently. Dreamstarter Sam Yellow Fat started the school food pantry and ran it from 2022 through 2026. She chose twenty-pound food boxes over backpacks so that whole families could be fed, not only enrolled students. Families can come in and fill a box with what they need every Friday or schedule a drop-in time or delivery.
Last year, Running Strong delivered 13,500 Smart Sacks to Keshena Primary School and 5,068 twenty-pound food boxes to families at the Wakpala School pantry on Standing Rock.
This year, Running Strong’s goal is to supply 13,500 food bags at Keshena, 1,440 at Bowler School, and 5,760 at the Wakpala School.
