Our Impact

Making a Difference with Summer Meals

More than 16 million kids qualified for meals from summer programs last year, but only 2.1 million children received them.

This year, due to rising unemployment and the ongoing recession, the need is greater. Share Our Strength and its partners are working overtime to make sure more kids get healthy meals this summer, and return to school ready to learn.

In rural Warren County, Tenn., for example, where unemployment has doubled to nearly 16% in the past few months and 55% of schoolchildren receive free or reduced-price school lunches, Warren County Child Nutrition Program (WCCNP) used a grant from Share Our Strength to expand its summer meals program in innovative ways.

In addition to serving three meal sites at elementary and middle schools, WCCNP delivers meals to satellite sites at apartment complexes and high school sports camps. With the help of Share Our Strength’s grant, WCCNP added a second lunch van this year to deliver nutritious lunches daily to 300 more children at five new satellite sites.

Renee Griffith, director of summer food at Warren County Schools, said, “These kids are practically taking care of themselves. They run up to the van every day and are ready and waiting when it arrives. Some ask if we’re coming on weekends.”

This summer, WCCNP expects to provide lunch to 2,250 children, five days a week at 15 sites across Warren County.

Here are more examples of how Share Our Strength, its donors and partners are helping make sure that America’s children get the nutritious food they need this summer:

  • The Florida Partnership to End Childhood Hunger developed a Public Service Announcement with the Orlando Magic to promote summer meals, launched SummerFoodFlorida.org where families can learn about the program and find summer meal sites near them, and is operating a bi-lingual, toll-free hotline to assist callers who don’t have Internet access. The Partnership has distributed 25,000 post cards (in English and Spanish) to promote the toll-free number and website, and has placed posters in strategically located bus shelters and Publix supermarkets.

  • The Partnership to End Childhood Hunger in the Nation’s Capital provided outreach, training and other assistance that increased the number of summer meal sites to 328 in 2008 from 301 in 2005, and the number of children served to more than 26,000—11,000 more than in 2002.

  • End Childhood Hunger Washington successfully advocated to restore $70,000 to the State budget to cover the cost of summer meal programs this year.

  • The Partnership to End Childhood Hunger in Maryland established a summer meals hotline to direct people to the nearest locations, and advertised the programs on bus routes, billboards, posters and 200,000 postcards given to students in high-need counties.

Learn more about Share Our Strength’s impact.

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