“School’s out for summer!” The 70s rock lyric sounds like a rebellious anthem of freedom to many elementary school kids every June, but what about the kids for whom school provides more than just learning – it provides their daily bread?
A West Texas county, working with churches, businesses, community services and the Baylor Hunger Poverty Collaborative, has devised a successful program to ensure that as many hungry children as possible get meals when schools are closed.
Mary Herbert is BCHP’s West Texas Regional Director, and 15 years ago she and friends from Southland Baptist Church in San Angelo saw a need and started a program called “Kids Eat Free.”
“Fifteen years ago, in 2009, our church was going through a visioning process … because we wanted to get more involved in the community,” Herbert said.
Bridging the gap
She continued that this process identified gaps in services because while schools provided meals in June during the summer session, nothing was provided to children in need for the rest of the summer until school resumed in the fall.
In their district, the San Angelo Independent School District, about 60 percent of students qualify for free or reduced school lunches.
“We thought, ‘Once summer school is over, what are our kids going to do in the summer?’ So we decided to do this summer meal program,” she said.
Herbert explained that they began reaching out to every possible place that serves meals to communicate their vision of having a place that serves meals to children for the remainder of the summer.
Another organization, called House of Faith, had already launched an initiative called Community Connect, pairing churches and schools throughout the community for “adopt-a-family” efforts.
Herbert and her friends couldn’t think of a better resource to start their plan to feed the children of San Angelo.
House of Faith understood the vision and enthusiastically jumped in. Without exception, our church and school partners pitched in to support the summer meal site.
“It was a very ecumenical gathering,” Herbert said.
“We had people from First Baptist Church cooking and serving food at a Catholic church on the east side, and the Episcopal Church helping out a Methodist church in another location. It was really rewarding to see everyone come together in a time of need,” she said.
Also in 2009, BCHP, then known as the Texas Hunger Initiative, began working toward its dream of eliminating hunger in Texas and was looking for communities to pilot what is now called the Coalition for Hunger-Free Communities, Herbert explained.
Southland Baptist Church and Tom Green County were not initially selected for the program, but church members were convinced this project was the best way to bring their vision to fruition.
Take it little by little
“When you start working on something like this, it can be overwhelming,” Herbert said. “Eliminating hunger from Texas seems like a really big thing to think about, but if you can just do it piece by piece, it becomes a lot easier to deal with.”
It took some convincing, but they were eventually selected as the pilot community, and as a result, the Tom Green County Hunger Coalition continues to make a difference in San Angelo and the surrounding areas.
Herbert said churches interested in starting such programs need to do the same, taking it piecemeal.
Southland Baptist Church runs its program each year from about the Fourth of July through the start of school in August, a period of about six weeks, which meets a need in a manageable time frame.
Herbert encourages congregations who want to start a mess hall ministry to share the responsibility: In the Southland, each Sunday School class has a day in which class members buy, cook and serve the food.
Herbert explained that different churches use their time on-site differently, but most make time for the kids to do something fun while they’re there. Before COVID-19, activities were an expected part of participating in the program.
But the pandemic has brought about some changes.
collaboration
Since the pandemic, some facilities have continued to offer meals in a grab-and-go format, but most have preferred to reinstate and maintain a congregate dining approach to serving meals.
The Kids Eat Free organization arranges visits from area services and groups: the police department brought a patrol car to show the kids, representatives from the state parks brought a cow form to teach roping, and some churches have water days or use Vacation Bible School materials.
“Because we’re private, we don’t have those restrictions. All of our work is privately funded,” Herbert said. They don’t receive funding from the Texas Department of Agriculture, and participating churches consider it a ministry.
Calvary Baptist Church has volunteers who love themes, so the meal site “goes all in” and has a different theme each week, sometimes including crafts or projects to complete in stages so families can come back each day and eat a nutritious meal.
Herbert said Kids Eat Free has served 287,941 meals since it began.
“Everyone who comes is so appreciative,” Herbert said, and he believes some families have become members of local churches as a result of the service, which is called “Kids Eat Free,” but parents also get to eat for free.
The city of Abilene also implemented the “Kids Eat Free” program to meet hunger needs in Taylor County, and Herbert said the city is willing to offer support to others who want to help implement the program.
Through BCHP and its partnerships, a variety of efforts continue to help end hunger in Texas.
This summer, the collaborative is partnering with the Texas Department of Agriculture to increase attendance at TDA meal sites.
Betty Teston, who works with Herbert as a program coordinator in the West Texas Collaborative’s office, said meeting children’s nutritional needs through the summer months presents special challenges in the rural areas where she works.
She works closely with government programs to help families access food and resources, as rural areas often receive little to no food assistance during the summer, Teston explained.
The organization has tried to address the issue of a shortage of staff to run rural meal sites by offering a new option for picking up food boxes at a drive-thru, but it hasn’t yet worked out as well as hoped.
They’re always looking for effective strategies to meet children’s nutritional needs, Teston said, and the future of summer meals may lie in finding ways to get food to kids, rather than relying on kids and families to show up for meals, she said.
But there are certainly opportunities for churches to get involved in solving hunger in Texas, Herbert and Teston said.
Editor’s note — This article was written by Calli Keener and originally published by Baptist Standard.
