Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools nutrition staff have been hard at work all summer, feeding over 58,000 meals to children who need them since the start of June.
Free meals are available to all children under 18 who visit select distribution sites at both breakfast and lunchtime. Staff have been serving up a variety of delicious and nutritious offerings on 13 different WS/FCS campuses, as well as 18 sites including parks, recreation centers, and apartment complexes that get regular visits from the team’s mobile unit. Child Nutrition Director Ekta Patel is grateful for the community partners who have cooperated with district staff to make receiving summer meals as convenient as possible for families.
“This year, we’ve had a strong partnership with Parks and Recreation, which allowed us to serve a significant number of meals and extend our reach,” Patel said. “We truly value this collaboration. Through these efforts, we’re not only feeding students, but we’re also helping prepare them to return to school ready to learn.”
Data from Feeding America shows about a fifth of Forsyth County’s children live in food insecure households. School lunch and breakfast can be a critical lifeline for these families to make sure their students get enough to eat, and losing access to those meals over the summer is a major problem. A robust summer meal program provides continuity to these students and helps keep them healthy all year long.
“There are a lot of kids who don’t get to eat every day for one reason or another,” said Cafeteria Manager Carie Boston. “This program might be the reason that someone gets to eat breakfast or lunch, and that’s really important.”
Summer meals also offer students social continuity. They’re able to spend time with their friends who they might not otherwise get to see until school starts back in August, and they have the potential to meet new people as well. Cafeteria Manager Lashawnda Pate says the students she serves feel more connected to their school communities through summer meals.
“Not everybody gets to go to camp,” Pate said. “Here, they’re not only getting a healthy meal, but they’re also getting a chance to be social and spend time with their friends.”
There’s a lot to appreciate in the summer meal program, and Nutrition Courier Kishor Patel says it doesn’t go unnoticed. He loves seeing students smile when they get their food and go on to enjoy the rest of their day. The summer meal program turns a potentially heartbreaking situation into an opportunity for joy, and he’s proud to be a part of it.
“We love these kids,” he said. “And we know how much they appreciate it. We can see what it means to them.”