Pay It Forward: Helping Levelland high school student collect food,snacks for fellow students

LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) - This week, WesTex Federal Credit Union stopped by Levelland high school to pay it forward to a student helping fellow students.

Junior Riley Siders is collecting food and snacks for the school’s program called Bill’s Backpacks.

“Bill’s Backpacks feeds the children on the weekends and on the holidays,” Cristal Isaacks, who works at the school and nominated Siders, said.

The program was started in 2010 and collects non-perishable food items year-round for students. Each month, they collect a different product, this month the program is collecting Pop-Tarts.

“They do different nonperishable items each month and take all kinds of monetary donations as well, to gather food for their pantry. And then deliver the food each week to the children to take home on the weekends and then double up if we have a long weekend or holidays,” Isaacks said.

Siders challenged his friends and the Levelland community to donate 1,000 thousand boxes of the snack. As of Tuesday morning, Siders says he’s collected a little more than 2,200 boxes.

Vicki Love, President & CEO for WesTex, stopped by to donate more boxes of Pop-Tarts to Siders and to provide him with a monetary donation.

Siders was nominated for this week’s Pay It Forward by Isaacks, who said she nominated the student because, “I thought that a high school boy thinking of others, having the passion for people that are less fortunate, deserved to have it paid forward to him,” said Isaacks.

Siders and the school will be collecting pop tarts until the end of the month.

You can find more information on Bill’s Backpacks on its website, click here.

You can find their Facebook page, click here.

For those who would like to nominate someone for Pay It Forward, they can fill out the form at KCBD.com.

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