Summer is a time for connection, exploration, and fun! Summer nutrition programs make sure children and young people have the nutrition they need to do just that. During the school year, meals are available to kids through school breakfast and lunch. But kids lose critical access to meals during the summer when schools are out. To fill this gap, many local schools and community organizations operate summer meal programs to provide meals to kids at no cost.
A big part of our work during the summer is making sure families know where to get help. Our Free Meals Finder services let parents quickly find free summer meals sites in their neighborhoods. Texting ‘FOOD’ or ‘COMIDA’ to 304-304 is another easy way for families to find the closest summer meals site. In addition to our texting line and website, this year we’ve added a WhatsApp service, to better reach immigrant families.
We are more hopeful this summer than we’ve been in a long time. Congress recently passed a new law making it easier for rural communities to deliver meals to children or offer pick-up services – as well as providing a monthly benefit for every child who needs it to help their families buy food.
These two big changes to the national summer meals program are going to help a lot of kids. No Kid Hungry fought hard for years for these improvements, and we couldn’t be more grateful to all our supporters who advocated for children.
There’s a lot of work to do rolling out these changes and helping families and communities understand them, but together, we can combat summer hunger and create a brighter summer for kids everywhere.
Anyone can be a champion for summer meals to raise community awareness and to support the development of new summer meal sites. Help us spread the word and use our New York and NYC Summer Meals toolkits with ready-made language and graphics to help us #ShareSummer. And don’t forget to tag us @NoKidHungryNY on Twitter and Instagram!