Cleveland Browns free safety Usama Young lends a hand to feed children in his hometown

WASHINGTON - Crates of canned food lay on the floor as a swarm of teens in gray T-shirts filed into the Capital Area Food Bank in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.

The group was proudly led by Cleveland Browns free safety Usama Young , a Washington native.

The group quickly formed an assembly line and began filling bags of food and packing them into large cardboard boxes to be shipped to surrounding schools and community centers.

Young started the Usama Young Youth Foundation to give back to his community and set an example for kids in his hometown. Bringing them to the food bank was a natural step from experiences in his youth.

“It kind of stemmed from when I was younger. My parents used to take us to downtown D.C., and we would go feed the homeless, we would all cook together,” Young said.

Young went to Largo High School in Upper Marlboro, Md., a Washington suburb, before going to college at Kent State University.

Young and members of his foundation from Prince George’s County are in good company as volunteers at the food bank. President Barack Obama and his family volunteered there last year, as did members of the Nationals baseball team earlier in the week.

The food bank distributes 30 million pounds of food annually, with a focus on fresh produce.

Young helped pack lunches for the Weekend Bag Program, a service that provides 1,000 children with lunches for the weekend when they are not at school or summer day programs.

The food bank has goals not only to feed the growing number of people in need but also to educate community members to live a healthy lifestyle.

“We have a lot of classes that teach people how to eat healthy, to use ingredients that we may use this weekend to send out in weekend bags in a way that would actually create a healthy meal," Grace Lichaa said.

She is the Food for Kids manager and oversees the Weekend Bag Program. With 200,000 kids at risk of hunger in the metro area, her job is more important than ever. The food bank has received a 25 percent increase in demand for food in the last four years.

This is the second year that the Usama Young Youth Foundation has volunteered for the program to help other kids in the area.

“To get all the kids in here and get actually hands on with it is something that I think is very beneficial to their upbringing” Young said.