760.575.4571


GYB Volunteers Rock!

Fighting Childhood Hunger in Our Own Backyard 

Looking into the face of hunger can be difficult, but a touch of empathy and an intentional act of kindness can determine whether a local homeless child will eat tonight… or not.

In San Diego County there are an estimated 16,000 homeless children, and that’s just the ones currently enrolled in our schools. These are not just kids from rural areas or low income neighborhoods. In fact, statistics from the County Office of Education show that almost all of the 42 school districts have kids who have been identified as homeless under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. These are not kids of any particular race or ethnicity. They are kids from every walk of life with one thing they all have in common…  they’re hungry.

Every week, Got Your Back San Diego distributes backpacks full of food to the schools where these children are. There, a school coordinator distributes the backpacks confidentially to each of those students. Every backpack contains enough food for 6 meals to sustain the students over the weekend. 

In addition to alleviating hunger, one of our priority goals is to maintain and uphold the dignity and self-esteem of the children we serve. One way we do that is by presenting the Got Your Back program to the students as a "Weekend Nutrition Club" rather than another homeless assistance handout. Included in every backpack is a homework assignment that teach kids about nutrition. The following week, they must turn in their assignments along with the empty backpacks to receive a full one. This method of distribution allows kids to learn while Got Your Back remains anonymous.

Please consider how you can get involved with GYBSD. There are many opportunities from packing and delivering backpacks, to shopping, holding food drives, helping in the warehouse, and more. Call 760.575.4571 today!

who we are

Got Your Back San Diego is a food assistance program that operates under the umbrella of American Relief Organization (ARO), a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Guiding ARO is it's Board of Directors made up of local small business people with a passion for serving the poor. But the life blood of ARO is the volunteers who are passionate and driven to make a difference in the lives of helpless children suffering hardship here in San Diego County.
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what we do

Got Your Back is a weekend nutrition program created by the ARO for elementary students in San Diego County schools who have been identified as homeless. Every week volunteers from all walks of life converge on our North County  warehouse to fill backpacks full of food and love and deliver them to schools. Currently, there are thousands of children in San Diego County’s schools who have been identified as homeless. With your help we are making a difference!
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who we serve

Living in a beautiful place like San Diego it may seem hard to imagine that almost 16,000 kids attending public schools are homeless. For most of these children, the school cafeteria is their primary source of nutrition. Many of them go the entire weekend with little or no food of any nutritional value. Got Your Back San Diego helps bridge the hunger gap for these kids over the weekend. Learn more about who these kids are and to help those in your local schools. 
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