After a tumultuous 2017-18 school year with First Book, the school’s Transportation, Distribution and Logistics (TDL) academy terminated its contract with them this summer and has now partnered with Food Bank for the Heartland.

TDL students will be working exclusively on the Food Bank For the Heartland’s Backpack Program. For this school year the academy will fill 25 percent of the needs for the Backpack Program, which means the group will assemble more than 2,000 bags of food per week for students who are food insecure in schools throughout eastern Nebraska and western Iowa, 96 of which are Omaha Public Schools.

“It’s [the partnership] going to assist the school programs in the area to make sure they’re getting high quality product and its services continue over the years which is going to be good for your community area,” Food Bank for the Heartland the Director of Distribution David Love said. “We really do think that once TDL gets into the flow that TDL will be able to take more responsibility off the Food Bank’s plate and again that opens up opportunities for new volunteers.”

TDL instructor Mark Anderson is excited about the change in partnership and appreciates the opportunity to give back to the community.

“I think that this is going to be a lot better for the students of Bryan High [than working with First Book],” Anderson said. “It kind of hits home a little bit more being able to put food in people’s mouths versus just sending full boxes of books to people we didn’t know.”

And while working with First Book, TDL students did get practical experiences with things like logistics, supply chain management and warehousing distribution, the partnership with the Food Bank will give the kids a better connection and sense of purpose.

“Really it [the partnership with First Book] was like our students were running a business,” curriculum specialist Mary Miller said. “It wasn’t just a hands-on learning lab; it was a true business. We had orders to fill and deadlines to meet every single week and so when it ended we were kind of upset.”

With First Book, they were helping more on a global level.

“So students would ship books across the country and TDL would never really see the kids TDL were providing books to,” Miller said. “With Food Bank we know that it’s going to local schools.”

While Anderson, Miller and Love are all looking forward to the year, it is the TDL students who have really bought into this new partnership.

Juniors Manual Zaubla and Jose Herrera both think the change from First Book to Food Bank for the Heartland was for the better. Zaubla likes how TDL does more to help out and how they are doing more in the academy than last year.

“I like how we are now more active in the warehouse,” Herrera said. “I prefer Food Bank over First Book because we provide more service.”