A local summer food program is on track to feed more than 3,500 children before it ends mid-August.
The Food 4 Kids program provides Jefferson City area children, ages 18 and under, with sack lunches daily June 29-Aug. 18, when summer school has ended and the regular school year hasn't started. In its first week, the program served 695 children sack lunches, which include a sandwich, fruit and a snack like a granola bar or cookie. There were 4,255 children who benefited from the program in 2014.
Volunteers assemble the sack lunches, approximately 120 daily, at First Presbyterian Church in Jefferson City, which is in its fourth year hosting. Food 4 Kids, a program through the Food Bank of Central and Northeast Missouri, originated at First United Methodist Church and moved to First Presbyterian after a leadership change.
Cash donations allow volunteers to purchase bread, meat and other needs for sandwiches, and the Food Bank supplies non-perishables. Packers, coming from seven churches and one business, organize the lunches. Deliverers, from eight businesses, hand out lunches at four locations - Second Christian Church, Elston Acres Mobile Home Park, the playground on Buena Vista and Collier Court.
Many of the children served are on the national free- and reduced-lunch program through the public school system, said Cynthia Quetsch, organizer of Jefferson City's Food 4 Kids. In Jefferson City Public Schools, 52.95 percent of all students participate in the free- and reduced-lunch program, a number unsettling to Food 4 Kids volunteer coordinator Sue Gray.
"A volunteer said to me that when our school district is at 50 percent free and reduced lunch, you know there is a need over the summer," Gray said Friday while supervising lunch assembly. "I really think there are hungry kids in this town."
East Elementary School has the highest participation in the free- and reduced-lunch program at 86.87 percent with 315 receiving free lunches and 29 children eating lunch at a reduced price, according to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Thorpe J. Gordon Elementary has 81.85 percent of its students eating free or reduced lunch, South Elementary has 72.14 percent, Callaway Hills Elementary has 71.32 percent and Moreau Heights Elementary has 59.47 percent.
The most lunches are distributed out of Second Christian Church. On Friday, 55 lunches were delivered at Second Christian, 30 at Elston Acres, 25 at Westview Heights and 20 at Buena Vista.
Quetsch said the program finds areas of higher need and distributes in safe locations. The number of lunches distributed are adjusted daily depending on the week's turnout. Quetsch said weather always has an effect on how many children show. Traveling also can play a factor, Food Bank communications coordinator Mike DeSantis said.
Three weeks into the Jefferson City program, 1,709 children have received lunches, according to DeSantis. If a location ever runs out of lunches, there is a backup plan and deliverers give children snack packs - instant macaroni and cheese, peanut butter crackers and granola bars - so no child goes home hungry. Of the more than 4,250 meals served last year, 488 were snack packs.