Feeding Kids All Summer Long

When schools close for the summer, children struggle to find food to replace breakfast and lunch they were receiving every day.

Over 60% of children in Arkansas rely on free or reduced lunches, meaning when summer comes, they are struggling to fill the gaps that those meals provided. The Arkansas Foodbank is here to help them over the summer when school is out to make sure they are getting the nutritious food they need.

When schools closed in early March, leaving many kids without meals unexpectedly, the Foodbank immediately began partnering with school districts in our communities to get meals to children and their families. We then continued on with our planned summer feeding sites, but with updated precautions to ensure the safety of volunteers and children.

We’re happy to announce that this summer, so far, we have served 2,844 breakfasts and 4,121 lunches, for a total of 6965 meals.  We had 11 feeding sites in Cleburne, Desha, Phillips and Ashley County. But summer isn’t over yet! We still have two weeks of summer feeding left and we project we’ll then have served over 10,000 meals to kids in our communities.

Our partners quickly adapted to our new COVID procedures to make sure children had access to the food they needed, safely.  Meals were packed in grab-and-go containers to limit contact, and we also had some partners that set up mobile sites in different neighborhoods in their community to guarantee that kids could easily get the meals.

Thank you to everyone who helped make our summer feeding program possible. Our partners truly went above and beyond to not only help make sure hungry kids got fed, but were also flexible in ensuring safety while serving these meals in their community.

If you’d like to learn more about our Food For Kids Program and what we do year-round to feed children in our 33-county service area, click here.