Nearly 30 percent of children in the Chapel Hill and Carrboro City School District are food insecure and rely on the National School Lunch program to eat. When schools close for summer, these children are at their greatest risk for hunger. To help alleviate this risk, TABLE is partnering with community organizations and businesses to continue to feed children living in Chapel Hill and Carrboro throughout the summer.
We kicked off our Summer TABLE program on June 27th and we will continue delivering throughout the summer. Deliveries will be made every Thursday directly to children across 35 sites in Chapel Hill and Carrboro including children’s homes, summer school locations and summer camps. These deliveries will help to fill the gap for children when they are home on the weekends and unable to access the food they need.
To ensure TABLE’s bags are filled with the healthiest and freshest variety of food, TABLE is partnered with Weaver Street Market as part of their RoundUp! Program. From May through October 100% of funds received from Weaver Street Market’s Carrboro and Southern Village stores will help cover weekend meals for the kids we serve and help make it possible for TABLE to pack and deliver Weekend Meal Backpacks over the 10 weeks of summer.
As TABLE does throughout the school year, the bags will contain enough food to feed a child for the entire weekend. A typical bag will consist of about 30% fresh food such as blueberries, apples, pears and carrots. In addition, healthy non-perishables will be included such as pasta, canned tuna, chicken and rice soup, vegetable soup, peanut butter, oatmeal and shelf-stable milk.
TABLE also considers children’s allergy, diet and cultural preferences when assembling the bags.There will be two different menus of food to accommodate diet, culture and food preferences and nearly 15% of bags will receive carefully selected food items to meet kids’ allergy or special diet needs.
Summer TABLE is also part of a greater community effort to ensure kids are fed seven days a week during the summer. This program, Food for Summer, is being led by the Town of Chapel Hill. You can find out more information about the program here.
Summer is supposed to be a time for kids to play, swim and have fun with friends. We hope the work we do delivering healthy, nutritious food every week will provide children with the energy they need to make fun summer time memories.