Hunger Takes No Summer Break: When School’s Out, the Challenge Is How to Feed More Kids
July 10, 2019
By: Erika Ortiz
Source: NBC News
Sweaty after a long, hot day spent playing in the park, more than a dozen children stopped in their tracks and jockeyed for a spot in line outside a recreation center on a recent June evening. They rubbed on hand sanitizer, then walked up to a concession stand window and grabbed a tray of food: barbecue chicken sliders, apple slices, baby carrots and a half pint of 1 percent lowfat milk.
Dinner was served. “Are you hungry?” Brigita Asiedu, 35, asked her daughter Nhyira, 9, as she cozied up to her meal in the cool shade of the playground equipment.
This scene unfolds five days a week at parks throughout the New Jersey community of East Orange, about 20 miles west of New York City, and at almost 49,000 sites across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., where federally funded summer meal programs are available at no cost to participants.