More than 13 million children in the US go to bed hungry according to the US Department of Agriculture. With the impacts of COVID-19, that number is expected to increase greatly.
Food insecurity can have long-lasting effects on young children, impacting their memory, social and learning skills:
Lack of adequate healthy food can impair a child's ability to concentrate and perform well in school and is linked to higher levels of behavioral and emotional problems from preschool through adolescence.
It is this staggering reality that prompted the formation of the Dinners4Kids OC organization to help to feed children in Orange County, NY.
About
Dinners4Kids OC is modeled after a program that originated in Pennsylvania over nine years ago by restaurant owners Edna and David Tevet to fight hunger in their community that met with great success and fed hundreds of children in need.
Rabbi Roger Lerner of the Monroe Temple for Liberal Judaism became aware of the Pennsylvania effort and approached David Wenger, owner of the Empire Diner in Monroe to see if and how the program could be replicated here. A core group of volunteers from the Temple and beyond worked to launch Dinner4Kids OC and began helping children, initially from Monroe, NY that will ultimately be expanded to include other municipalities throughout the county.
How It Works
Area school nurses identify at risk children whose only decent daily meals are subsidized school lunches, now unavailable due to summer vacation and the fact that schools have closed as a result of the coronavirus.
Once these children are identified and the families are contacted by appropriate school representatives, Dinners4Kids OC steps into action. The restaurant, in this case the Empire Diner, provides freshly prepared, kid-approved nutritious, delicious and balanced dinners in microwave-safe containers that are easy enough for children to heat on their own. This includes six meals per week for all of the children in a given family.
Volunteers deliver the food, which is dropped off at the door for safety purposes and following health protocols.
Funding the Program
The funding for Dinners4Kids OC depends solely on donations. The organization is reaching out to the community, to organizations and businesses to raise money to feed these and more children in need.
All the funds donated to the program are used for the direct costs of preparing the meals. It is a volunteer-based program, with no paid staff and no facility expenses.
