(LE MARS, IA) - Seeing students hungry when they were not fed at school, one Siouxland group is packing with a purpose.

Front and center in an otherwise bare room at Nohava Construction sat ingredients for hungry kids' futures Monday.

Brenda Nohava's son used to play football with a child in need, and his hunger inspired this project. "I knew he was hungry, you can tell. There's lots of children like him, just not at Gehlen Catholic, but in Plymouth County, period."

She started and is coordinating "Le Mars BackPack." Every Monday volunteers will pack roughly 120 sacks of food for both elementary schools in the city. Sacks will go home with kids Thursday. A service group called "Tri-T" packed the inaugural sacks.

"I think it's a wonderful feeling," said Tri-T member Lorene Rexwinkel. "Hopefully it will continue and be something we can do in the future again."

The program's budget comes from grants and donations, and help Nohava's received from the community. "Lawyers that have helped me, CPA's that have helped. Just the community has come together," she said.

A Merrill, IA card club even donated money it would have spent on Christmas presents for members. "So they came in and gave us cash," Nohava explained. "How awesome is that? We were like yeah, so it was like 180 dollars and I said, 'do you know how much 180 dollars is going to buy?"

It bought, in fact, more than 90 sacks of nutritious food for community kids in need.

 

 

Reported by Jeremy Maskel. You can reach Jeremy at jmaskel@kmeg.com. Friend him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jmaskel or follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jermaskel.