LOCAL Houston | The City Guide FEBRUARY 2016 | Page 46

BLESSINGS

ALL

AROUND

MELISSA

PETER

MELISSA PETER grew up in East Texas. This August she’ll celebrate her 25th wedding anniversary to KEVIN with whom she has three boys. A speech pathologist
by education, Peter had worked with kids in early childhood for many years in
Spring Branch. As her boys started negotiating middle school, “I felt like I wasn’t
fulfilled in terms of the professional piece of my life. I sought out all types of volunteer work trying to find a niche. Very, very randomly I came to understand
that in our inner city, especially in the Third Ward, is a food desert. I had never
even heard that word, sadly enough. This was just a few years ago and the
idea that we could live in such an urban, oil and gas capital, and immediately
south of Downtown and within miles, there’s an area where families can’t get
groceries – that was pretty startling.” Peter learned about this through her
church’s women’s Bible study group, where she drove by Blackshear Elementary
in the heart of Third Ward. The school and thoughts of how those kids get their
food and how those moms get groceries haunted her, followed by thoughts of
doubt. “I think, like a lot of us, I thought I don’t even know where to begin.” But
as fate would have it, in February 2012, four months after discovering
Blackshear, Peter was at a doctor’s appointment and picked up a People
Magazine where she read about Blessings in a Backpack (BCB), a national
organization that provides weekend meals to children, who, otherwise, might go
without.
And just like that, Peter knew what she had to do. And so began the process of
reaching out to BCB national, raising the initial funds ($4,000, which was
raised at an open house the Peter family held in their home for neighbors and
church members), identifying the school (which Peter had done first) and contacting the school, getting the school on board and securing a space through Holy
Spirit Episcopal Church and School to assemble and store food. On the Friday
after Labor Day in 2012, Bayou City Blessings in a Backpack started with 60
kids, “and by October we had gained enough momentum to add another 40
kids, pushing us up to 100 kids. And then at Christmas time that year we got
a $10,000 grant from the Walmart Foundation. It was amazing. Walmart does
this thing called ‘12 days of giving’ and someone in the community just submitted our name. And it was national! Like 12,000 names across the country!”
In four years their growth has been substantial. Today there are 758 kids
combined at Blackshear Elementary in the Third Ward and Spring
Shadows in Spring Branch’s north side. A $100 donation supports one child for
a year, which consists of 38 school weeks. “But the cool thing about it,” shares
Peter, “and I don’t know the exact statistics, but I would say that over 90% of
our volunteers are kids. And that to me was an unexpected blessing. We have
three boys and this definitely is a family program for us. My initial drive was
that I want my kids to be engaged in the community. I want my kids to know
what our world is like in a way that kids can understand and that they can do
something about.”
To support Bayou City Blessings in a Backpack, visit www.holyspirithouston.org/bcb.

46

L O C A L

| february 16