Kickapoo Kolache

For most kids, Friday afternoon means the start of the weekend. For some Brownsboro ISD students, it can also bring a quiet worry: will there be enough to eat until Monday? Every Friday during the school year, close to 100 of those students head home with a bag of food tucked into their backpacks, a simple sign that someone is looking out for them. They will never know who packed it. That is exactly how Sherry Parker wants it.

“They’ll never know my name, they’ll never know who we are,” Parker said, “but every day on a Thursday or Friday, or whenever the school counselors hand out those bags, they know that they have a community who loves them, that somebody out there cares enough to … send them home food.”

“It sounds like I do a lot, but really I think it’s the Lord having His people out there doing — I just kind of coordinate.” — Sherry Parker

Parker coordinates Bear Necessities, a food program for BISD students at risk of food insecurity. It has been serving the district since 2013, operating as a separate ministry of the food pantry at Rock Hill Baptist Church, which allows it to buy food at a reduced cost through the East Texas Food Bank in Tyler.

“I can’t feed the whole world, but I wanted to do something”

The seed was planted in 2010, when Parker went on a mission trip with Rock Hill to Malawi, Africa. There, she saw poverty and hunger and knew that there had to be people in her hometown who were also struggling. “I can’t feed the whole world, but I wanted to do something,” she remembers thinking. Once she returned home, she helped open the church’s food pantry that same year. Indeed, the need was right here — including grandparents raising grandchildren and neighbors with disabilities.

A few years later, she asked, “What else can I do?” The idea of sending food home with students, inspired by the East Texas Food Bank’s backpack program, was laid on her heart. Not knowing where to start, she prayed for a plan. The next morning, she said, she grabbed a notebook and wrote out an outline: talk to the Chamber of Commerce in Chandler, meet people, shake hands and just start talking about the desire to help the children.

When she brought the idea to her pastor at the time, the church was in the middle of a building project and already supporting the food pantry. Not wanting to burden the church with “one more thing,” they agreed to make Bear Necessities a community project, not just a Rock Hill project. “This is what the Lord has laid on my heart,” she told the pastor, and offered to raise the money herself. His answer: “If that’s what the Lord is telling you to do and you raise the funds and you get it done, go for it.”

She did. That first year, 2013, she raised almost $20,000.

Packing parties and an assembly line of love

Children are nominated confidentially by school counselors and staff; Bear Necessities never knows who they are. A typical bag holds easy-open foods kids can manage on their own — two bowls of cereal, two milks, two juices, two pop-top cans like lasagna or mac and cheese, and lately ramen noodles. When a long break is coming, the team tries to send extra food home. The biggest campuses served are the Chandler and Brownsboro elementary schools, plus the intermediate school.

After COVID, the team found they could stretch donations further by packing their own bags. Now, at “packing parties,” volunteers move down tables set up “like a buffet line,” filling bags while others tie them off and box them. Five or six packings carry the program through the whole school year. At the Oct. 20 packing party at Faith Baptist Church, Faith Baptist Youth, Rock Hill and community members packed more than 720 bags, according to a Bear Necessities Facebook post.

Parker is quick to share the credit. “Kacy and Amanda are the heart and backbone of the program and do all the deliveries,” she said of Kacy Burns and Amanda Loden of Faith Baptist Church of Brownsboro — Kacy has helped “from the very beginning,” Amanda for the last couple of years. Churches, businesses and community groups have stepped up with donations along the way. Many of the people and groups who have given and volunteered are featured on the Bear Necessities – feeding BISD students Facebook page. The East Texas Rotary Club, the Chandler Chamber of Commerce and the Brownsboro community page have all helped spread the word, and the Chandler Texas Chamber of Commerce named Bear Necessities its Organization of the Year in 2025.

Bear Buddies

Parker also organizes Bear Buddies, “another fundraiser for Bear Necessities” — “something the school allows me to do through the athletics and theater departments.” It is advertised through the school website and parent portal.

This year in the theater department, students in grades 4–6 will take part in three events. For $35, they get a T-shirt, a preview of what the theater department does, a part in the Christmas program and then a second event performing that program for the public. Wearing the shirt the rest of the school year gets them into any show free. BraveHawk in Chandler has kindly given Parker a steep discount on the shirts, so the rest of the money raised goes toward the Bear Necessities fund.

In football and volleyball, K–6th graders meet a high school student who becomes their Bear Buddy, do a workout with the athletes and then run out on the field or court on a game night. Parker appreciates these departments’ efforts not only to raise awareness of the need but also to raise funds.

Meet Sherry Parker

Parker grew up on a farm outside Murchison, in a family that didn’t have much — hand-me-downs, a garden and their own cows — but there was always enough food on the table. Every family goes through hard seasons, she knows, and that is why she believes a little help at the right time can make such a difference.

She and Andy, her husband of 31 years, raised their three sons, all grown now, in Brownsboro, and they have two grandchildren. She has served at Rock Hill in various ministries and has been program coordinator for the Rock Hill Outreach food pantry since 2010 and for Bear Necessities since 2013.

Before becoming a licensed professional counselor, she helped with a recovery ministry. One night, while ministering at a local addiction recovery facility for teens, a young person asked what she was in recovery for. She told him she wasn’t; she was there so they would know they were loved. “All the kids came up and gave me a hug,” she said. Soon after, she felt a nudge to return to school. She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from LeTourneau University, finished her master’s in 2018 and became an LPC. Today she contracts with CPS and sees private clients, children to adults, for mental health and substance abuse, work that shows her what food insecurity can mean for a child.

She credits Andy as a “very supportive husband who understands that’s my passion.” Parker calls Matthew 25:40 “my motivation verse”: “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” (ESV)

Compassion that multiplies

The best days, Parker said, come in stories. A bus driver overheard kids comparing their bags — one didn’t like his juice, and another offered to swap. “Here these kids are compassionate toward each other,” Parker said.

Then there was the teenager who stayed after a packing night and quietly told her, “Ms. Sherry, I’ve never told anybody this, but at one point I used to be one of those kids.” The family had been through a hard season; eventually things got better and they no longer needed the bag. Now they were packing bags for others. “It was really a moving testimony to hear how beneficial it was for their family, and now they were reciprocating and helping others,” Parker said.

Asked for one message for Brownsboro and Chandler, Parker paused through tears. “It’s just been such a blessing to see that there’s such a community outpouring to help the kids,” she said. “They’ve always given when I’ve asked. They’ve always shown up when I’ve asked … what the Lord laid on my heart years ago is still happening because of wonderful, generous people in the community who don’t want to see kids go hungry. I so appreciate what other individual programs do to raise funds; the food and can drives; churches who designate funds — it all helps. Every can. Every dollar.”

Looking ahead

The summer challenge. The hardest part, Parker said, is when people ask how these kids get food in the summer. Because the program is anonymous, Bear Necessities can’t deliver during the break; it doesn’t know who the families are. One year the team sent home flyers near the end of school with a calendar of days families could stop by for food, no questions asked. Only one or two came. Her first reaction was heartbreak, and then a second thought: “Maybe they don’t have a car … or they don’t have gas money.” She is grateful that other ministries step up with summer lunches at the school. “It doesn’t have to be just one person trying to take care of it all. It can’t be done,” she said. “It really does take a village and for compassionate hearts to work together.”

A hope for Murchison. Bear Necessities’ funding is in a stable place right now, and Parker’s heart is turning toward Murchison. A woman who works at a school there told her some children dread school breaks because they will miss the two meals a day they get at school. Parker would love to talk with Murchison’s school about how many students might benefit, and with local businesses about helping. She wants any new program to have its own community support, because Brownsboro and Chandler donors gave in good faith to feed BISD kids. “So, it may not be this year,” she said, “but maybe next year? We’ll move as the Lord leads, even if it’s helping them get their own program started.”

Today it costs about $180 to $200 to feed one student for the school year — up from about $120 when the program began. Bear Necessities is funded entirely by the community. You can be part of the next bag.