If you are moving to Kansas City and have children, help to make hunger a thing of the past; get involved with BackSnack and help provide food to local starving children.

1 in 5 children who live in the Northland of Kansas City go home hungry every day.

BackSnack is a Kansas City program by Harvesters-The Community Food Network, and every year, multiple sponsors help to lend their support to BackSnack so that thousands of Kansas City children can go home with food and not go to school hungry. Every year, the program helps to give backpacks filled with food to children who are hungry in Northland, to take home every Friday, to last the weekend.

Kansas City social worker Karen DiSanto, has been working inside the Park Hill School District for 20 years and last month she met a third-grade girl who said to her, “I didn’t eat dinner last night, just popcorn. We only have popcorn and beans in our house.”

In her 20 year career, DiSanto says that Park Hill schools’ reduced-lunch and free-lunch numbers have grown from 10 to 12 percent of children, to 40 percent of children receiving them daily. DiSanto says that this is a result of working parents still not being able to make enough money to buy their family food, after all the bills are paid (if the bills even get paid).

DiSanto is making it her duty and obligation to make sure that these children have food to go home with every weekend. She even told the little girl that she will take the time to take her to the grocery store if her family needs her to.

This holiday season, local newspaper The Star is partnering with Harvesters for a virtual food drive called KC Challenge: Childhood Hunger, in order to raise money for Northland’s hungriest children.

In the last four years, Star readers have helped to donate $800,000 to the program, with a 2014 goal of $1 million.

If you are moving to Kansas City, subscribe to The Star and be a part of their 2014, $1 million goal.