On Oct. 14, Feeding Greene cut the ribbon on a renovated building at 81 Main Street in Stanardsville, Virginia. The space is intended to give the nonprofit’s Backpack Program its own base for preparing food for Greene County students and Head Start families. The program sends food home for weekends and school breaks, and Feeding Greene’s director said it now reaches about 150 children each week.
The opening marked the end of a long renovation and the start of a practical change in how volunteers can organize the work. Rhonda Oliver, Feeding Greene’s director, told Cville Right Now that the Backpack Program is run by students themselves. She said a dedicated room gives them space to work while keeping its food separate from other pantry programs. Because the program is not part of the federal USDA food program, Oliver said, its food is purchased or donated and needs separate handling.
The new space was not built from scratch. Feeding Greene bought the small Main Street building in 2022, Oliver told Cville Right Now and WVIR. It needed extensive work, and she said some people advised the nonprofit to tear it down. Instead, Feeding Greene kept the building, gutted it and added new plumbing, wiring and walls, as well as a new roof. The renovation took about four years, according to Oliver.
That timeline unfolded while the Backpack Program kept operating. The organization had to continue serving students during the work, Oliver said, as need for food assistance stayed high after the COVID-19 pandemic. At the ribbon cutting, she described the building’s completion as the result of many people’s contributions and called the gathering “a true example of what true community looks like.”
The program itself has changed since Feeding Greene took it over. Cville Right Now reported that the Backpack Program began with Legacy Church in 2018 and that Feeding Greene assumed full operation in 2021. Oliver said weekly participation grew from about 70 children to around 150. Those figures describe students served by the backpack effort, not households served by the nonprofit’s pantry overall.
The Blue Ridge Area Food Bank describes backpack programs as a way to help children and families have food at home when school meals are not available during weekends or holidays. Its community-supported model lets local partners tailor programs to local needs. At Feeding Greene, that work relies on food and monetary donations, Oliver told the local outlets. A food bank communications manager said the regional organization provided a capacity-building grant to help build out the space and offers its partners a discount on food they purchase through the bank. The food bank says its typical family-backpack menu can include oatmeal, peanut butter, pasta, beans, rice and protein, with each backpack providing the foundation for 13 family-sized meals. That is a description of the food bank’s broader model, not a claim about the contents of Feeding Greene’s weekly bags. The nonprofit’s own pantry also has regular walk-in hours and makes home deliveries twice a week for people who lack transportation or have physical needs. Its website says emergency food applicants may receive groceries once a month. Those services remain distinct from the student-focused backpack effort.
Feeding Greene’s broader pantry serves families through several programs. The nonprofit’s current website says it has provided supplemental food assistance since 1995 and now serves more than 870 families with over 63,000 pounds of food each month. It also reports an average of 160 volunteers contributing about 2,000 hours monthly to collect, sort and deliver food and help with daily operations. Those are organization-reported figures for the pantry as a whole, not results of the new Backpack Program building.
WVIR reported on Oct. 14 that Feeding Greene planned to move into the renovated facility immediately. The opening coverage documented the ribbon cutting and the program’s growth, but neither outlet reported a later count of meals or students served from the new space. The building’s clearest promise is more modest: a dedicated place for students and volunteers to organize a program that has expanded while sharing space with other pantry work.
For a community effort that depends on donated food, purchasing support and volunteer time, the renovation is a piece of infrastructure built around a specific routine. Students can work in a separate space, food can be kept apart for inventory, and the broader pantry can continue its other services. After years of repairs carried out alongside ongoing distribution, the Backpack Program now has a home designed for that work.
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