for many children in al by county, kentucky, survival depends on free meals at school. when they re not at school, some kids don t eat at all. the backpack program is to feed the children of our county. i m alex wagner. find out more about childhood hunger and what you can do about it at msnbc.com/backpack. really dramatic moments ending this siege. we are watching the rapidly evolving situation out of sydney, australia. the dramatic scene unfolding at a downtown cafe where in the last hour we saw heavily armed police swooping in with bursts of gun fire as hostages ran out of the building. the hostage taker and gunman has been identified as heron moan s, a self-proclaimed cleric who has been living in australia since the 90s.
bruni and lori, thanks for your time. after we aired the first part of the invisible us, we started getting messages about how to help. we had the outreach food backpack program. since then, msnbc viewers have donated over $2,000. if you break that down. one backpack of food provides seven meals to feed a child for when he or she leaves school on friday until he or she returns to class on monday. that one weekend of food costs just $5. your donation so far will pay for 3,000 meals and it will feed one child every weekend for more than eight years. to find out more about that program and how you can support it today, head to msnbc.com/backpack. coming up, north korea just de-kim jong-un ified itself. not in the way you may think. that s next. ur auto insurance premium every month on the dot.
the food company hickory farms is matching up to the first $50,000 donated. it is a great way to raise money for a solvable problem. even if you don t have a passion for the poor, if you care about educations, schools, jobs, about our competitiveness as a nation, we have to solve this hunger problem. we can t have a strong america with kids who are not strong. it has a cascade effect indeed. thank you gentleman for your time and the work you re doing. thank you. in the spirit of giving tuesday, we want the to highlight a program we saw firsthand in eastern kentucky. tomorrow we will tell you what the backpack program does for low income children and why without it some children don t have a meal all weekend long. to find out more about that program and how you can support it head to msnbc.com/backpack.