Summer vacation can be a difficult time for some kids, especially the nearly 27 percent of Chapel Hill – Carrboro City School students who qualify as food insecure.

As Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger points out, many of these children rely on free-or-reduced price school lunches to eat during the school year, and those lunches stop during the summer.

“We have a very long summer this year, about 11 weeks again,” says Hemminger. “The kids that are on free-and-reduced lunch, of which we had over 3,000 kids, don’t have access to those meals during the summer.”

That’s where Food for the Summer comes in, an organization that Hemminger helped to start which is entering it’s fourth summer of providing lunches to children that may not be able to afford them.

“Food for the Summer works with the school system’s nutrition program, and we help deliver the meals to the kids,” says Hemminger. “Whether at camp, or we call them ‘feeding sites’, open sites, closed sites, and we ask for volunteers to help pick up the meals and take them to the kids.”

Food for the Summer relies on volunteers, and according to Hemminger they had nearly 600 last year.

“It’s about an hour-and-a-half, two-hour window of time to volunteer,” says Hemminger. “You can sign up once or multiple times.”

Food for the Summer provided over 42,000 meals to kids last summer, and hopes for even more this year. Food for the Summer will serve meals and hold other activities Monday through Friday from June 17 through August 16.

For more information, visit foodforthesummer.org.

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