Fighting Summer Hunger to Nourish Children’s Futures
In 2020, the COVID-19 crisis revealed the prevalence of child hunger in Missouri when school buildings closed and thousands of children were suddenly faced with losing the breakfasts and lunches they relied on at school. We learned that households with children worry about how to make ends meet when kids aren’t in school and got a better look at the challenges long breaks, like summertime, pose for families facing hunger. Many of Ozarks Food Harvest’s partner charities made changes during the pandemic that have lasted to this day – like Community Outreach Ministries (COM) in Bolivar, who added a kids’ summer lunch program to their services that is now entering its fourth summer.