Spring is almost in full swing and summer is just around the corner. Millions of children in America can’t wait for summer vacation, but for millions of poor children who rely on school meals it’s a mixed blessing. “I qualify for free and reduced lunch. I can get a free breakfast, I can get like a muffin, juice, anything like that, in the morning, and then lunch, I don’t have to pay, so I can get whatever I wanted for lunch. So I’ve always been able to eat at school for lunch and breakfast.” Linda Ransom is a Columbus, Ohio high school senior and the winner of a Children’s Defense Fund Beat the Odds® scholarship whose family struggles to make ends meet. When Linda was seven her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and the medical crisis led to a family financial crisis. Linda’s mother lost her job, and with a mountain of medical bills is still trying to catch up ten years later. They’ve been homeless for stretches of time. Food has often been beyond their means. Linda says, “If we didn’t have any food at home, I knew I could get some at school, and sometimes I could take a couple things from the breakfast line and I could just save it for later, so when I got home, if I was hungry, I could eat it.”
Hunger doesn’t take a summer vacation and poor children like Linda who rely on free and reduced price breakfast and lunch during the school year to keep the wolves of hunger at bay face a long summer of food deprivation. “It was hard without school during the summer, but being able to qualify for something like food stamps or having a food pantry near us, that helped a lot,” Linda says, but at the end of the month, “it was kind of like a hit-or-miss kind of situation.”
Hit or miss. No child in rich America should go hungry this or any summer, especially when 100 percent federally funded summer feeding programs are available if local officials and communities apply for or use them. But more than 1 in 4 families with children are food insecure and struggling to keep food on the table. The federal Summer Nutrition Programs could help millions more children escape hunger this summer by providing meals if responsible adults act now. The need is urgent. Although 19.7 million children received free or reduced price lunches during the 2013-2014 school year, only 3.2 million children – 16.2 percent – participated in the Summer Nutrition Programs.
If local school boards, community groups, faith congregations, mayors, and county representatives act now, they should be able to get 100 percent federally funded Summer Nutrition Programs in their area or add more if there already are some summer food sites. The federal Summer Food Service Program and the “Seamless Summer” option offered through the National School Lunch Program are designed to replace the regular school year breakfast and lunch programs. Meals provided through the Summer Nutrition Programs also can link children without summer learning opportunities, camps or other costly options to educational and recreational programming to keep them learning, active and safe during school vacation. Summer feeding programs also create jobs for food preparers, servers, bus drivers and others.
Schools, community recreation centers, playgrounds, parks, places of worship, day and residential summer camps, housing projects, migrant centers, and Native American reservations are among places that can serve as summer feeding program sites. Many more sites are needed to fill the summer hunger gap for millions of children. Far too many communities have no sites at all or have sites difficult for children without transportation to reach. Check in now with your school officials, mayors and county executives to learn what they are doing to prevent childhood hunger. Some questions to ask include:
- How many children receiving school year breakfasts and lunches will be served by Summer Food Service Programs? What steps have they taken or will they take immediately to get more summer feeding sites up and running?
- How are parents notified about free summer food options?
- Are there district school buses that could be outfitted to deliver summer meals to inaccessible rural areas?
- How many weekend and holiday meal backpacks are provided to children within the Summer Food Service Programs? Has your school district reached out to seek community support for these backpacks?
- In districts with large percentages of children in housing projects, have you or local officials asked housing authorities to make sure they get food to hungry children?
- Are faith communities and service organizations with kitchens in your community aware of the 100 percent federally funded resources and planning to provide summer meals this summer? Do they know about the Children’s Defense Fund’s Freedom Schools® program that provides summer reading enrichment and food to stop summer learning loss and hunger among low-income children?
Check the Summer Meals Toolkit on the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service’s Summer Feeding Service Program website to learn more about becoming a Summer Meal Champion in your community or call the National Hunger Hotline at 1-866-348-6479. There is no reason why there should be a single hungry child in America. Please act now before the school year ends to allow millions of children to take a real school vacation without hunger pains.
In the greater Cleveland area, there are several places that children to go to get free breakfast and lunch during the summer. Their a few challenges that go along with this. First, many people are not aware of these locations, allowing people to go hungry with food within reach. Second, many of these providers have a limited amount of food. As a result, they are careful not to advertise too much to spread the resources. Third, the quality of the food can be sub-par due to the fact that many of these locations depend on food that is donated. This often means that they are literally serving food that the low end stores were not able to sell. Fourth, many of these free locations are in historically poor communities. This neglects the hidden poor who, due to programs like section 8, have migrated to more affluent neighborhoods that do not see the need for such programs. These issues are just to name a few. There are many more. My point is not to be negative. My point is to show that, even with good intentions, there is still much work to be done to address child hunger this summer.
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ReplyDelete"No child in rich America should go hungry this or any summer, especially when 100 percent federally funded summer feeding programs are available if local officials and communities apply for or use them. But more than 1 in 4 families with children are food insecure and struggling to keep food on the table."
I'm happy to know that Rock Hill has a Summer Food Service Program. Children are able to go to local parks to get food during the summer. The only down side is the food that is being wasted daily. But there is also no excuse for each community to have a program that serves food to children during the summer. I agree that these sites should be placed in communities the children are able to get to safely. Programs like this should also be advertised so the people who would benefit from the program would know how to locate them. Community officials should take advantage of getting these programs in their local communities so no child has to go through the summer hungry
When I first started getting involved with Freedom Schools I was amazed at just how hungry many children are. I realized that many children are only afforded the opportunity to eat at school, but that realization was validated when scholars always complained about being hungry, and some even stole snacks. I think we often take for granted how fortunate we are to be able to eat multiple times on a daily basis. At my site in 2013, we even began sending scholars home with backpacks full of food to last them through the weekend. I think more communities should get involved with the initiative to provide meals to children over the summer because hunger is a terrible feeling and there is no way to expect children to be productive, growing members of society when one of their most basic needs is not being met. I have in the past seen information about Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools participating in a summer feeding program, but have not heard anything about this summer and it is quickly approaching. This article has prompted me to look into what I can do to help!
ReplyDeleteI am from Chicago, IL and went to the inner city public schools. I remember that we had one snow day from the time I was in 2nd grade to end of high school. We had late starts for children to get to school on time, or in certain occasions they just would not count tardies. I asked a high school teacher why we never got out of school like the rest of the suburbs or metropolitan areas. She informed me that if they closed school, then some kids would not be able to eat, and in some cases, these were the only meals that children received throughout the day. I was shocked and never complained about another snow day. It is all about perspective. It also reminded of my 4th grade teacher who always told students to go get an extra breakfast and/or lunch if they were still hungry. I smile today remembering her arguing with a lunch lady at one time and informing that she would pay for the extra meals that kids received. I often wondered after that what happened during the weekends for these same children that did not have food. It wasn't until I got to grad school where I learned about the "home lunches" or "home meals" that schools send home with certain students that are impoverished and have been flagged to have little food. Of course the rest of the students do not know this, but sometimes they call students to the office to take home meals for the weekend or the parents pick up the meals from the school. I grew up in impoverished community, and some would even say I was an at-risk youth, but I know now just like I knew then that I have always had certain protective factors in place. I have gone three days without eating before, but I still know that I was blessed to not have to experience the ongoing situation of being hungry. At the Freedom School sites I served at in Springfield, IL, there were always outside community children coming to receive their lunches during the summer. There are a lot of programs and schools that target child hunger but as this article goes to show, there is still a lot more to do. I was fortunate to live in a neighborhood where we ate at each other's houses and was treated like family by those who lived on your block. I do stand that communities should be doing more to help out their own, and we as a society should be doing more to ensure that communities are able to carry this out.
ReplyDeleteServing as a Servant Leader Intern has had such an impact on how I view poverty and child hunger. It saddens me to know that majority of our scholars do not have the opportunity to eat dinner. I have witnessed so many scholars put their afternoon snacks in their pocket in an effort to save it for later. However, I have seen those same scholars take it right back out because of how hungry they are.
ReplyDeleteSummer 2014, I had one scholar who ate his breakfast and lunch within the first three minutes of sitting down. Shortly after, he would go to his friends and beg for their food. After a while, his friends became annoyed, and the scholar grew angry. When I pulled him to the side, I asked him why he always asks for other scholars food and his answer was so heartbreaking. He said "Ms. V, the food does not fill me up and my stomach is always hurting because I am hungry". From that moment on, I always sure to provide him with extra fruit or snacks privately.
Most of the time, we see the problem but we do not work towards a solution. The Children's Defense Fund and Freedom Schools has assisted me in finding solutions. Today, I can say that I have made countless strives to make others as aware as the Children's Defense Fund has made me. With this article, I have insight as to how I can be more supportive throughout the summer.