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Children go hungry in community, even with free summer meal programs
Children go hungry in community, even with free summer meal programs
POSTED: TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 2015 12:00 AM
By Jen Schneider
As an educator, I love having summers off. Even though I spend some days planning for the fall and taking classes, it’s nice to have a little extra time with my family.
But summer doesn’t make me forget about “my kids” – the thousands of children I have taught over the years. One fear on my mind when the final bell rings is whether or not some of my students will go hungry during the summer months.
According to Hunger Free Heartland, a non-profit initiative to end childhood hunger in Nebraska and Iowa, 1 in 5 children and 1 in 7 adults in Nebraska are food insecure, meaning these adults and children may not know where their next meal is coming from.
Nebraska ranks 41st in the country for the amount of low-income children who participate in summer meal programs (in Nebraska, that number is 9.3 percent). Children are going hungry in our community, even though there are more than 200 sites in the area that serve free meals for children during the non-school months.
FULL story at link.
