Food insecurity remains a challenge facing many Kentucky families with children. We hear about it a lot, especially now that pandemic-era programs have been rolled back.
About 625,000 children will qualify for the USDA free breakfast and lunch program next school year, according to the Food Research and Action Center, a national nonprofit dedicated to ending hunger. While the program is vital, it’s not a full solution. What happens on the weekends and breaks when kids are not in school? What about that long summer break?
A community approach
Ninety percent of students in Dayton Independent Schools are eligible for the USDA free breakfast and lunch program all year. The district’s Family Resource Center helps students and their families with food on weekends and longer breaks through its food pantry, too.
In the summer, most of the district’s elementary school children are on site anyway for the 21st Century Program, an academic program funded through a YMCA grant. Meals are provided during the day. This year, the meals are available in the high school cafeteria.
Older students on campus for athletics or other activities also come for meals. Any child under 18, whether they are students or not, are invited to come for the summer meals, said Tracy Gentrup-Ruebusch, Dayton’s district director for the Community Schools Initiative.
“We are also blessed to have St. Bernard church in our district,” Gentrup-Ruebusch said. “They have a food pantry that families can get into once a month. They’re open on Mondays and Thursdays.… Cornerstone Christian Church provides meals for children on Saturdays. They get meals donated, whether it be pizza, subs, anything like that.”
The district also tries to have at least four “Party in the Park” events on Fridays during the summer, where they provide hot dogs and chips, she added.
Coming together to provide
The USDA program is a hot meal program. Children must come to a school building, community center, library or other designated place to eat the food on site. This can be difficult for kids who don’t live within walking distance.
Many people and organizations across Northern Kentucky have stepped up to ensure children don’t go hungry this summer. Florence-based Go Pantry started 12 years ago as a way to provide food over weekends for kids in need. Children receive a “Go Bag” to take home, each packed with enough nonperishable foods for several weekend meals.
Go Pantry Executive Director Laura Dumancic said she and her friends learned from their kids that some of their children’s classmates, who got meals at school, went hungry over weekends. They decided to do something about it. As their effort grew, they decided to start a nonprofit, and to use a food drive model to get the resources they would need.
“Go forward now 12 years,” Dumancic said. “Now it’s not one school, it’s over 80 schools across six counties. And we’re doing two things. The weekend Go Bags are getting home to 1,200 kids a week. We do big boxes to help the kids and their families through the extended breaks from school.”
The summer Go Boxes each contain a week’s worth of meals. Each box weighs 45 pounds and costs about $55. Last summer the program served about 1,600 kids, and Dumancic expects the need to be even greater this summer.
They distribute over June and July and up to the start of school.
Making Go Pantry go
With help from Go Pantry, volunteers can run their own food drives for nonperishable foods or for cash donations. In summer, it’s a big operation, requiring trucking and logistics, delivery and operational support. Many organizations and local companies run food drives at work and send groups of volunteers to the Go Pantry warehouse to help pack and load the boxes.
St. Elizabeth Physicians and St. Elizabeth Healthcare employees have embraced the program. “Champions” from different departments help organize a two-week food drive. At the end of the drive, St. Elizabeth volunteers help at the warehouse as well.
Dr. Chanti Flanagan, a physician administrator and hospitalist, helped start the program at St. Elizabeth.
“This is our 10-year anniversary,” Flanagan said. “It really became a passion project for multiple different departments and divisions and areas. So you take 11,000 associates, staff and physicians and providers, and you’ve got a pretty good result.”
Last year, St. Elizabeth provided 4,200 Go Boxes, and is has set a goal of 5,000 boxes for this year.
Hitting home
Angela Purcell is an EKG technician at St. Elizabeth. She has seen the program first-hand.
“My sister passed away about three years ago,” Purcell said. “She was a single mom of four. Every summer, [Go Pantry] would send box after box home for each one of her kids. And that really helped her.”
Purcell had been a single mom as well, and said she wished Go Pantry had been available when her kids were little. She worked, but, like many, she made just enough not to qualify for government assistance – but not always enough to make ends meet. Some days, she said, she just had crackers and water for a few days.
“Go Pantry is a way for kids to know that they have food coming to them, that they will not go hungry for the summer,” Purcell said. “The parents don’t have to try to figure out how they’re going to feed their kids if they can’t qualify for the programs through the government.”
Where to find summer meals
The USDA food program is administered through the Kentucky Department of Education. For a list of meal sites, starting in May go to the Summer Meals Finder at fns.usda.gov/meals4kids. For more on the USDA program, see nokidhungry.org.
To volunteer or find out where you can get food through Go Pantry, go to gopantry.org.