As we all know, the past several weeks have been a struggle for our entire world, country, state, town, schools, and so many of us personally. While we have all hoped and prayed for easy solutions, this was not to be. As with everything and everyone else, Back the Pack has struggled, too.

We, at Back the Pack, had a number of issues that we could nor solve quickly to continue our weekly deliveries in the manner that we have for the last nine years and six months.

The first issue was the fact that our Back the Pack group is made up of members who fall into the most vulnerable group of people who are most at risk for COVID-19.

Secondly, the mall was closed until it is safe to open.

Next, while we planned to hopefully start delivery again on a regular basis on April 20th after Spring Break, School opening was delayed until April 30th, and now possibly May 15th with no guarantee that it will happen.

We also had a problem with our confidentially policy. As most people know, we are a very discreet program and have no personal knowledge of our recipients, nor do we want that knowledge, so that eliminated any personal volunteer deliveries.

We also could not find a way to pack items with our outside groups or with our own group and maintain the social distancing as was required.

We also had an order from our supplier that we were concerned would expire before the start of school in September, so with all of these things in mind and after much discussion, we decided to go another route ensuring that our students in the Massena Central School District would receive all of the benefits of our program as in past years.

It was decided after conversations with Mr. Peter Bertrand of the Massena Central School Lunch Program to donate all of our food on hand to that program to be given out each week in their food bags for the week.

The donation totaled 634 prepared snack packs valued at $2,137.08. We had a huge amount of food delivered from Renzi Foodservice Feb. 24t enough to pack 2,688 snack packs and valued at $9,069.78. Our total monetary donation to our Massena School District was $11, 206.87. Another way to look at this was we donated 33,220 individually packaged items for our Massena School to add to their weekly food bags.

With the help of our two hardworking members, Betsey Crary and Brenda Seguin, and our Massena Central foodservice/ custodial staff, the removal of all of our supplies to Massena Central was accomplished quickly. They filled 2 trucks. Thank you John Sheets, Richard Daniel, Rod Pelkey, and Melody Fay Hartigan.

We hope that our Massena Community, near and far, who support us year in and year out will find this the best solution for the difficult times we are now faced with. While it was not the solution we had hoped for, we found it the best solution at this particular time.

Thank you our Board of Education, Mr. Brady, Mr. Bertrand, all of our school principals, school counselors, and everyone who helped with this endeavor.

Back the Pack will be in September to help children in the Massena community. This will be our 10th year. Hopefully, we will be bigger and better than ever. Thank you to Massena for your continued support and help.

Julianne C. Paquin, chairperson

Back the Pack, Massena