NASHUA – The day after 60 volunteers from a local business stuffed school supplies into backpacks for children of needy families, a handful of teenagers picked up where the older volunteers left off at the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Nashua.

“I did it a couple of years ago, and I wanted to come back because it’s good,” said Claire Hamnett, 17, of Tyngsborough, Mass.

“It’s good for the heart,” added her friend, Brittany Garavanian, 18, also of Tyngsborough.

Heart is the engine that drives the Nashua Soup Kitchen & Shelter Backpacks for Back to School Program, now in its 20th year.

The program is different from the school district-sponsored Nashua Goes Back to School program. That program gives school supplies in plastic bags to all students in Nashua at the beginning of the school year. Conversely, the Soup Kitchen gives backpacks full of supplies specifically to students from needy families, said Carol Weeks, community outreach person for the Soup Kitchen.

The backpacks will be distributed Wednesday from the gym of the Boys & Girls Club, Weeks said. The students were identified through clients who use the soup kitchen, through fliers handed out at the kitchen, and by word of mouth, she said.

Supplies stuffed into the backpacks include pens, pencil sharpeners, erasers, dry eraser markers, pocket folders, bottled glue, glue sticks and spiral notebooks.

The backpacks themselves are donated or bought with donated money.

There has been no shortage of volunteers to do the work of stuffing the backpacks. Sixty Fidelity Investment workers spent a full day at the club Wednesday, and other volunteers worked feverishly Thursday morning.

The Thursday afternoon crew included Hamnett, Garavanian, their friend, Sarah Perry, 17, of Tyngsborough, and Erik Loschiavo, 18, of Nashua.

A person could fill about 30 backpacks an hour, said Loschiavo, a Nashua High School South graduate who will soon start freshman classes at the University of Connecticut.

On Thursday morning, volunteers had filled 442 backpacks, and Weeks hoped that 304 more would be filled in the afternoon.

While volunteers haven’t been in short supply, the same can’t be said of donations. In fact, donations are down from previous years, while need is increasing.

As of Thursday, organizers still needed 1,254 backpacks to help 2,000 children, Weeks said.

A supply of good, sturdy backpacks have been found at $16.97 each, and donations are being accepted to buy them, she said.

The number of meals served at the Soup Kitchen has increased, Weeks said.

“We’re sure the numbers here are going up too, and we’d hate to turn kids away,” she said.

Through the Soup Kitchen program, 1,800 filled backpacks were distributed in 2008, 2,242 in 2009 and 1,958 last year. The goal for this year is to distribute 2,000 filled backpacks, Weeks said.

This is the first year the Soup Kitchen has partnered with the Boys & Girls Club, at 47 Grand Ave., Weeks said. For the past two years, the backpacks were packed and distributed at Ledge Street School, but that wasn’t an option this year because of construction at the school, she said.

The benefit has outgrown the space available at the Chestnut Street soup kitchen where it was held before moving to Ledge Street, Weeks said.

As an added bonus to children and families: On the day that the backpacks and school supplies are distributed, the Boys & Girls Club will have on display a traveling exhibit showing projects and programs through which U.S. presidents have helped children.

Patrick Meighan can be reached at 594-6518 or pmeighan@nashuatelegraph.com.