NEWS
BY RACHAEL CARNES
THE CEREAL FOR YOUTH PROGRAM
DISTRIBUTES FREE, INDIVIDUALLY
SIZED PACKAGES OF CEREAL
THROUGH CFY PARTNER AGENCIES
PHOTO: DENISE WENDT
SUMMER SAFETY NET
FOOD for Lane County’s child nutrition programs
S
ummer is the high season for Karen Roth, child
nutrition programs manager with FOOD for Lane
County.
“We have such a need,” Roth says. “Fifty-three
percent of Lane County’s children and youth are
eligible for the National School Lunch Program.”
For a lot of kids in our communities, summer means
going hungry.
“There are many children in the county who depend on
the school-year program, deriving up to 75 percent of their
daily nutrition from the school based meals,” Roth says.
“It’s hard to imagine what it feels like for those kids when
school closes for the summer.”
The Summer Food Program (SFP) is one of the handful
of Child Nutrition Programs (CNP) run by the U.S. Depart-
ment of Agriculture. Similar to the National School Lunch
Program (NSLP), it’s reimbursement-based, with FOOD
for Lane County receiving one reimbursement per child
served per day.
“FOOD for Lane County’s SFP program runs all ‘open’
sites, meaning that we qualify the area, not the child,” Roth
says. “That means that children don’t have to rely on any
adult to fill out paperwork, nor do they have to worry if
they ‘qualify.’”
The SFP program is open to all children and youth ages
18 and younger.
“We don’t serve infants, and for ‘wobblers’ two and un-
der we need to make sure there is a responsible adult there
with the child,” Roth says. “Other than that, it’s first come,
first served. No reservations, no paperwork.”
In the 18 years that Roth’s been managing the SFP pro-
gram, she says that the number of summer free lunch sites
for children have ranged from 37 to 67 sites around the
county.
“This year, it’s going to be somewhere around 50-58
sites,” Roth says. “The highest number [of meals] we’ve
served in a summer was 133,458 in 44 days.”
10
June 8, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com
In a little over a month, this nonprofit organization
served tens of thousands of healthy, nutritious meals. “We
serve anywhere from 1,500 to 3,000 kids a day,” Roth says.
“As in the other supplemental food programs we run,
including the emergency food box pantries, the money the
families save by utilizing these programs can help cover
gaps,” Roth says. “So, if you can save, say, two dollars,
five days a week, by your child participating in the SFP,
that $10 savings can help to cover meals when the program
is not running.”
PHOTO: DENISE WENDT
Many children receive free breakfast in school. But
what about summer?
“We do serve breakfast at sites where we know the kids
are going to show up. We have learned that kids will not get
up out of bed to go to breakfast at park sites so we concen-
trate on placing the breakfasts sites at summer schools —
someplace where they have to be,” Roth says.
Another program, Cereal for Youth (CFY), distrib-
utes free, individually sized packages of cereal through
CFY partner agencies located at schools, child programs
at affordable housing complexes and youth activities.
The donor-based program is sponsored through part-
nerships with Attune Foods, Glory Bee and Grain Mill-
ers.
“But the SFP relies solely on USDA reimbursement,
and in the state of Oregon, is administered by the Or-
egon Department of Education,” Roth says. “We do not
use any product donated to the food bank, with the ex-
ception of CFY, which we hand out if we run out of
meals.”
The USDA allows FOOD for Lane County to accept
money donations to the program, but they don’t solicit
for the Summer Nutrition program because of high de-
mand for funding from FOOD for Lane County’s other
programs which don’t receive USDA dollars, Roth says.
“The program, along with the National School Lunch
Programs and all the other Child Nutrition Programs, are
extremely vulnerable under this administration,” Roth
says. “There are people in the country who don’t feel
that they should be paying for other people’s children
through their tax dollars — just as other people don’t
like their tax dollars funding wars,” she notes. “This is
an extremely unfortunate sentiment as the children of
today are the taxpayers of tomorrow.”
It’s not just about calories, Roth notes. It’s about
brain development and health.
“Since the cognitive development of a child is the last
part of the body to get nutrients, not providing these kids
with the meals they so badly need is a road to disaster,
not only for the child/adult, but for the country,” Roth
says.
For more information about Child Nutrition Programs, as well as a complete
list of Summer 2017 free lunch distribution sites, please visit foodforlanecounty.
org. This is the first in a three-part series on how local nonprofits are helping
neighbors cope with food insecurity issues.