BUTLER COUNTY, Ohio — It might look like just a stack of boxes, but Rebecca cooper sees much more, something that brings her to tears. 

• Every week, church volunteers deliver boxes of food for students to eat over the weekend
• Each student, who otherwise would have nothing to eat, will get a bag filled with three meals, discretely placed in their backpacks
• The churches raise the money, and the food bank provides the food and packs it

“Just to think about what kids did before this. to think that they didn’t have anything to eat, you know, kids don’t deserve that,” said Cooper, volunteer.

These boxes are filled with enough food for kids — students who would otherwise have nothing to eat over the weekend.

And each student will get a bag filled with meals discretely placed in their backpacks, as part of the Backpack Program. 

“Your younger kids, your elementary schools, they’re the ones that need like 20 or more each week, and it just keeps rising each week,” said Cooper.

It’s the reason she volunteers to deliver those boxes to schools in the Edgewood School District in Butler County.

The Edgewood Ministerial Association --a church group that raises money for the food — estimates they’re helping to feed about 120 students a week.

“Then it grew even more, and moneywise, it became more cost effective to go through Shared Harvest,” said Donna Lenos, Edgewood Ministerial Association.

Shared Harvest is the food bank they pay to pack up the food. 

And Executive Director Terry Perdue says it’s not just Butler County where the need is getting worse.

“With our Backpack Program throughout the five counties that we serve, we have upwards of about 4,000 children each week who get a bag of food from us,” said Perdue.

He says the need has been going up every year for more than a decade, keeping volunteers at the warehouse busy packing, and volunteers with the church group busy delivering, to make sure kids don’t go home hungry.