Children in the United States will have healthy lunches for free five days per week this summer.
For public school students, summer means free meals provided through the School Lunch Program. This program is designed to feed school children from low-income families in the country. Thousands of meal sites will be set up across the U.S. in the summer and these sites will provide free food to students 18 years old and below.
The Summer Food Service Program provides either lunch or breakfast to children who have limited access to school meals. Officials note that less students avail of the free meals program in the summer than those who use discounted and free meals in the school year. During summer, many families struggle to feed extra meals to their children and the program is designed to alleviate that strain.
"It's a hopeful message, that we can grow this program," Food Research and Action Center president Jim Weill said, adding that the new report is encouraging as it showed big gains in the previous summer which fed 3 million children nationwide. "All the evidence is that hunger - food insecurity - spikes during the summer for kids, and it's because the kids don't have regular-year school meals. Summer food programs are the answer to that."
The federal government, along with the state and local officials, are joining hands with non-profit organizations to provide meals to children. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, under the Summer Food Service Program funded by the feds relies on each state to engage sponsors in low-income regions to register as food providers.
These sponsors are usually non-profit organizations but sometimes school districts and local governments join in as well. The sponsors typically prepare the food themselves but they can also hire a vendor. They are reimbursed at around $3.50 per meal served at lunch and around $2 per meal served at breakfast. One problem is that reimbursements are only given for meals served and not for meals prepared.
A bigger reimbursement rate might attract more sponsors and may mean more meal sites. It could also ease the strain on volunteers who manage the sites for four hours per day, five days per week. Meal sites pop up at the end of June and some will also offer outdoor activities, movies, playgrounds and concerts.
