With Coronavirus Closing Schools, Here’s How You Can Help Food Insecure Children
Story by Lauren Lee, via CNN.
On any given day, the National School Lunch Program provides low-cost or free lunches to 29.7 million children. But the coronavirus pandemic is shutting down schools and parents are scrambling to find ways to feed their hungry kids.
Charitable organizations are working to fill the gap, but they need your help. Here are a few organizations you can support:
- Blessings in a Backpack typically feeds school children across the U.S. through the weekend, but the organization is partnering with districts that have summer feeding programs to extend services while schools are shut down.
- Save the Children has teamed up with actresses Jennifer Garner and Amy Adams to launch #SAVEWITHSTORIES. The program is providing children in America’s poorest communities with nutritious meals, books, and other learning resources during the outbreak closures.
- United Way is using their COVID-19 Community Response and Recovery Fund to stock food banks with essential staples to help feed children who rely on schools for meals.
- Feeding America, with a network of 200 food banks across the U.S., has a COVID-19 Response Fund to help food banks support communities impacted by the pandemic.
- World Central Kitchen founder Chef José Andrés closed all of his Washington, D.C. area restaurants but keeping some of them open as community kitchens offering free to-go lunches for those in need.
CNN will continue to update this list as more ways to help become available.