March 9, 2021
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The Torrington Schools, the Torrington Police Activities League and Gifts of Love have teamed up to fight childhood hunger in the their town. The program kicked off in March and each Friday, children in Torrington’s schools will leave school with backpacks filled with a weekend’s worth of food for their families. The backpacks will be delivered by members of the Torrington Police Activities League (PAL).
The effort was spearheaded by a town resident, Michele Sok, who was concerned about the pandemic’s impact on the community’s children. “I have an 18-month-old and the thought of a child going hungry was more than I could imagine. Over the last year I have seen a lot of families impacted by the pandemic. I wanted to find a way to help,” she says. Sok was looking for a way to start a backpack program to provide weekend food for children and their families so she reached out to Nancy Carlson at Gifts of Love for some tips on how to successfully bui