End Summer Hunger for Kids in South Carolina
When school is out, many children lose access to the free or reduced-price meals they receive during the school year, making summer one of the hungriest times of year for kids. Communities use a combination of programs to help fill this gap, but in South Carolina, families are missing something important: SUN Bucks, which the state has not yet chosen to implement.
SUN Bucks provides eligible South Carolina families with $120 per child for the summer. The program could reach an estimated 633,000 eligible kids in the state.
If state lawmakers opt in, South Carolina could receive around $76 million in federal dollars, directly boosting local economies, especially in rural communities. Based on current estimates, that’s an expected economic impact of $131 million for the state.
While summer should be a time for fun and growth, for too many kids in South Carolina, it’s a time of uncertainty. When school is out, families lose access to school meals, and the gap is often hardest in rural areas.
SUN Bucks changes that. Each eligible child receives $120 for the summer, giving families the flexibility to buy the foods their kids actually need, without worrying about transportation to meal sites, stigma, or limited meal site hours.
Even a few months without this support can have lasting effects. Families often stretch limited resources, skip meals, or make impossible trade-offs.
This is a problem we can solve. State lawmakers have a clear choice: provide families with SUN Bucks support, or let hundreds of thousands of children face another summer without the healthy meals they need to thrive.
