Hunger doesn’t take a summer break. For families facing hunger, summer is an added challenge as children lose access to the school meals that kept them fed during the school year. Many parents and guardians worry about how they’ll fill the gap for up to three months – and turn to Ozarks Food Harvest’s network for help.
Hunger doesn’t take a summer break. For families facing hunger, summer can be a challenge because children lose access to the school meals that kept them fed during the school year. Many parents and guardians worry about how they’ll fill the gap for up to three months.
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.
Did you know more families turn to Ozarks Food Harvest’s hunger-relief network when kids go on summer break? Thousands of children across the Ozarks rely on nutritious school meals during the school year, but when school is out, they worry about where their next meal will come from.
Of the people served by Ozarks Food Harvest’s hunger-relief network, one-third live in a household with children. So many of these children rely on nutritious school meals that help them learn, grow, and play, but what happens when school lets out for the summer?
Did you know more families turn to Ozarks Food Harvest’s hunger-relief network when kids go on summer break?
In December 2022, Congress passed a spending package that created the most significant nationwide anti-hunger program in nearly 50 years – the Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) program.