Media Roundup: Our Highlights from Summer 2023

With Labor Day in the rearview mirror, we’re closing the book on summer 2023 and celebrating a historic season.

For kids who receive school meals, the summer months can be the hungriest time of year. And while summer meals programs were designed to help connect kids with the nutrition they need when schools are closed, they’ve historically reached only a fraction of eligible children. Barriers like transportation, restrictive program regulations, and extreme weather stood in the way.

During the pandemic, temporary changes were made that gave schools and community organizations the flexibility they needed to reach kids with the nutrition they needed, like allowing meals to be served outside of traditional group settings and letting parents pick up meals, sometimes multiple at a time. Thanks to these efforts, the number of summer meals served in July 2020 at the height of the pandemic was nearly triple the number served in July 2019. 

The proof was obvious: these changes worked. And for summer 2023, thanks to a significant investment from Congress, those temporary flexibilities were made permanent. In eligible rural counties, meal providers like school nutrition departments and food banks no longer had to require kids and teens to eat on-site in the heat; in some cases, the providers delivered meals directly to families’ doorsteps and/or sent home 10 days’ worth of meals home at a time. This was an incredible step forward in ending summer hunger in the U.S and one of the most consequential changes to federal nutrition programs in years. 

No Kid Hungry Virginia spent much of 2023 working hard to ensure eligible schools and communities were ready to participate, and we spread the word to help families learn about new summer meal options. Some of our favorite headlines are captured below, and we’ll be sharing spotlight stories in the weeks to come. 

And even though this summer is over, we’re already thinking about 2024: next year, we’ll need the collaboration of all of our stakeholders to deepen the implementation of these historic flexibilities and to help spread critical awareness so that every family can benefit from these game-changing resources. 

Scroll on for a snapshot of our 2023 summer media highlights: