Rabbit attends an after-school program every day, and is enrolled for the all-day “Summer Adventure Camp” at the school. The after school program is run by the local YMCA, as part of the Community Learning Center (CLC) initiative. The target demographic for the program is similar to Head Start and Healthy Start, offering kids supervision and homework help as an alternative to being “latchkey children” at home alone.
Rabbit enjoys the program, and we’ve adjusted to it since the beginning of the year, with its ups and downs. The program supervisors were new and now that they have their sea legs, things are going much better.
Tonight I was going over some paperwork for the enrollment, and the parent handbook had a sheet of paper tacked inside with an announcement about meals. It detailed the process for lunches, and that through the county health department, the CLC program will host a summer lunch program that distributes sack lunches to children every day. I did a little eye-rolling: sack lunches? Really?
Then I read it again, and read the last paragraph. Oh.
They are hosting the meal distribution to children. In general. Not just kids in the CLC program. This paragraph broke my heart:
“Breakfast will be served between 7:30 and 8:30, and is open to any child age 2-18, so you can bring the whole family, as long as you let us know.”
At my daughter’s school, the local food bank hands out backpacks on Friday afternoons for children to take home. These backpacks are full of food items for the child’s family. Children are registered for the program by their parents, or teachers, or by the school social worker. Some of these backpacks are the family’s sole source of nutrition for Friday night, all day Saturday and all day Sunday. The local food pantry has expanded the program for the summer, by offering breakfast and a sack lunch each day to any child who shows up at the school, regardless of whether they attend there, and without asking for proof of need.
I would encourage anyone reading this to call your local food pantry tomorrow and find out if there is a summer meal program, or a backpack program for needy children. If there isn’t one, email me and I’ll send you the web address for our food bank if you think your community or city might benefit from this. And if there is one, find out how you can help.
After reading so much terrible news online, and hearing about the incredible brutality and horror present in the world, I find out that these small things, these daily meals, this stream of kindness still runs through the lives of children and families. It may not bring about world peace, but it can heal the heart of a struggling parent and fill the belly of a hungry child.
Stumble It!
thank goodness for community programs like this in these times. i think that there’s a whole new demographic for who may need such help. and it’s a little bit scary. and sobering for sure.
I wish there had been such a program when we were kids.
When our family lived in another state in another stage of our life – my kids loved the breakfasts at school.
They did not realize how much I loved the breakfasts at their school. Send me the food bank email please.
We have this in our community as well. It is a great program. Many years ago I volunteered to help serve the hot lunches to kids in the comminuty in the summer. It was a great thing to do.
yep, both in the town where I live and where my kids go to school, this is offered.
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What an absolutely fantastic program. Thanks for sharing the information!