When School is Out, Summer Food Program is in Session

In the deep shade of Emerald Park’s tree-ringed playground, elementary-age kids run, climb, and laugh. It’s a hot day, and parents, caregivers and kids alike are glad to have the respite of shady benches.  

They’re not just at the park to play. At 11:30, the kids eagerly gather around picnic tables. Food for Lane County staff and volunteers are happy to see them. The children receive a full lunch—an entrée, fruit, milk—and happily scatter to eat.  

“Yay, pizza bagels!” kids yell as they open their lunches.  

This scene is repeated across Lane County at 49 parks, community centers, and school playgrounds all summer long. By the time summer has concluded and the kids are back at school, Food for Lane County expects to have served 60,000 free lunches to any child who needs one.

School meals have become an essential building block for thriving kids in our community—more than half of children in Lane County schools qualify for free or reduced breakfast and lunch. Food for Lane County is an essential partner to our school districts all year long, stocking 11 school-based pantries and 4 early childhood centers and providing 26,000 weekend snack packs for kids to take home.  

But summer presents a yawning gap for local families. The end of the school year brings precarity for many—scrambling to find and afford summer childcare and struggling to fill the gap that school meals take care of. 

The USDA-funded Summer Food Program provides free, nutritious meals to youth aged 18 and under during the summer months. This critical program picks up where school breakfast and lunch programs leave off to help children get nutritious food over the summer months.

We recently expanded the program to serve more of rural Lane County. The Summer Food Grab-N-Go Program is designed to provide USDA-approved lunches to rural youth. Food for Lane County staff deliver five days’ worth of lunches, stopping at designated locations across rural communities once a week. At each stop, kids are handed a bag containing 5 days’ worth of lunches.

“This program is really more than just food to these kiddos,” says Bay Ross, the site supervisor at Sheldon Community Center. “It’s a part of their lives during the summer.” 

To see all summer meal sites, visit our Summer Food Program page. Timely updates about specific locations, weather- or air quality-related program changes will be posted via social media at facebook.com/foodforlanecounty and instagram.com/foodforlanecounty. Follow us for Summer Food Program updates and more.