Help Support Summer Lunch Programs
Help Support Summer Lunch Programs While School is Out
The Nurturing Our Neighbors Now (NONN) Ministry Team wants to take action to help the Thurston County Food Bank (TCFB) continue to feed hundreds of families every week despite large cuts to funding and important resources. We will coordinate a food collection each month focused on a specific need expressed by the food bank. While we will identify a high need item, any non-perishable items are welcome as are monetary donations to TCFB (which the food bank can stretch further or use to purchase items that are harder to get through donation). We learned of a big need TCFB currently has for its Summer Lunch Program to ensure that youth who rely on school meals continue to receive nutritious meals when school is not in session. Their staff and volunteers prepare and serve lunches at several apartment complexes and mobile home parks each weekday. For June and July, we are collecting 3 items that TCFB prioritized for the lunch program:
Sun Butter (Made from sunflower seeds. The Summer Lunch Program requires sunflower seed butter due to peanut allergies. It is usually found in the same section as peanut/other nut butters, often on one of the higher shelves.)
Shelf-stable Milk (8 oz. cartons)
Raspberry or Strawberry Jam (large jars)
All three can be found at most grocery stores, i.e. Fred Meyer, Safeway/Albertsons, Target, Walmart, etc. Shelf-stable milk can also be found in 18 count packs at Costco. There will be a bin in Crary Hall for your donations. NONN will deliver donations to the Thurston County Food Bank. There are many needs in the community and if this is one that appeals to you, please consider helping. Thank you!
‘Hungry Time’ – Update on Food Bank Assistance
For many kids, summer is a time to relax, to play, to have fun, and take a vacation with the family. Others know it as the Hungry Time, a time when their family struggles to give everyone enough to eat. This is especially true for children whose family income is less than 130% of the Federal Poverty Line; $32,150 for a family of 4. With rent locally averaging around $2000 a month, it is easy to understand why hunger lurks in the background. During the school year, these kids qualify for the USDA School Breakfast and Lunch programs which may be the children’s only two meals of the day and are sorely missed during school breaks. The U.S.D.A. summer feeding program exists to help families get through these hungry months. While the consequences of the recently passed U.S. budget bill are not yet fully understood, we do know that some programs that previously provided food to food banks have seen funding cuts or have been eliminated entirely. Food banks are struggling to keep up, a challenge that will intensify as people lose access to SNAP.
The Thurston County Food Bank is a sponsor for the U.S.D.A. Summer Food Program, providing free lunches to kids 18 years old and younger five days a week for two months. The Free Lunch program serves 13 feeding sites in the greater Olympia, Tumwater, Lacey area with a simple sack lunch consisting of a sandwich, milk and fruit. The food bank needs help with this heavy lift, so we have been collecting sun butter and jam for sandwiches and 8oz. containers of shelf-stable milk. You can imagine how many items are needed to feed everyone five days-a-week for two months.
At the recent Family Camp Nites, we collected sun butter, jam and shelf-stable milk for the free lunches. A count done by the campers found that we had collected 23 jars of jam, 33 jars of sun butter and 200 8oz. boxes of milk. This will be enough to fill 460 sandwiches and supply two hundred servings of milk.
With Summer Meals continuing until the end of August, we will continue collect the sun butter, jam and milk for another month. Due to federal program cuts other foods are needed as well: protein foods such as canned tuna/chicken and nut butters are in particularly short supply.
