Chapel Hill’s Food for the Summer Kicking Off Third Year

Food for the Summer is about to begin its third year serving food to Chapel Hill and Carrboro students. Its kickoff event on Tuesday afternoon started the season by spreading the word about the lunches and summer activities in store for this year. Children played basketball, jumped on a bouncy house and picked vegetables from a farmer’s market stand outside Northside Elementary.

The program serves lunches in 15 community areas, allowing students up through high school to receive a free meal for an hour each day.

Liz Cartano is the child nutrition director for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school district. She helps coordinate all the food at schools and the program, and said she sees the importance of getting students these meals first-hand.

“We feed a lot of these same kids on our free-and-reduced program,” Cartano said at Tuesday’s event. “And then what ends up happening is school gets out, and you have children that have been eating breakfast, lunch and snack in school and then all of a sudden, there’s no meals.”

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools district has about 30 percent of students who qualify for free-or-reduced meal plans. That amount is why Chapel Hill mayor Pam Hemminger helped start Food for the Summer three years ago. She said the program has found ways to improve on their 45,000 meals distributed last summer.

“We’re reaching more kids this year,” said Hemminger. “We engaged the social workers at the schools and really figured out where these kids were so that we could better plan our sites and the communication piece to get the kids out.”

Also new to Food for the Summer this year will be more summer camp-style activities. In addition to serving food, the initiative now offers various activities to children during the lunch hour. With options like nutrition education, lessons with law enforcement officers and signups for community events, Food for the Summer gives students a broader experience than just meals.

Hemminger credited the numerous community sponsors for creating that element of the program and emphasized how the camp experience fits alongside the food experience.

“We want all our kids to grow and learn and have a good summer, and we don’t want them to backslide,” she said. “But you can’t do that if you’re hungry and don’t have as much to do, so it fills a real community need. This is a great partnership between community helping community.”

Program director Carolyn Brandt urged Chapel Hill and Carrboro residents to consider working with Food for the Summer, either serving food or coordinating sites. Shifts are still available and Brandt said community support is crucial to the initiative.

“Every single day throughout the summer, we have about 30 volunteer spots,” Brandt said. “We’re always looking for volunteers. They’re the backbone of the program.”

Food for the Summer 2018 begins serving its meals as school lets out for the summer and will run until August 24.