New campaign hopes to feed more hungry children

By Kyle B. Hansen (contact)

Saturday, March 6, 2010 | 2:05 a.m.

The Area Health Education Center of Southern Nevada holds a summer day camp for children from minority and low-income families, but staff members found a lot of money and time went toward keeping the children fed.

They found help in that regard last year from the Summer Food Service Program, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and administered by the state.

Because most children the non-profit group serves qualify for free or reduced-price lunches at school, the USDA will reimburse the group for feeding the children two meals a day during the camp.

“It saved us a lot of time and it saves us a lot of money,” program coordinator Tenesha McCulloch said. “The kids really enjoyed the food and we had more time to spend with the kids instead of making food.”

McCulloch was on hand Friday at the Culinary Training Academy in North Las Vegas for a meeting about the food program.

The academy and Three Square, the local food bank, are collaborating on a campaign called Neighbors for Nutrition: Feeding our Future. The groups hope to sign up more sponsors and sites so the program can provide 1,000 more meals this year than last year.

Last year, the program provided 496,000 meals in Nevada and about 5,000 meals a week in Clark County, where about 149,000 students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

“We’re really not feeding that many kids a day in the summertime,” said Karen Vogel, who runs the program for the state. “The summer food service program is the most under-utilized program of all the child nutrition programs from the USDA.”

Last year, Clark County children received free meals at 44 sites, less than half of those in the state. Those sites were sponsored by 14 non-profit groups. To get food to the children, more sponsors are needed, Vogel said.

“We have kids in need in the community. They need to be fed,” Vogel said. “What we really need right now is sponsors and locations to feed these children.”

Three Square and the Culinary Training Academy work as vendors for the program. They prepare and deliver the meals to most of the sites that then serve the food to the children.

“Ensuring that all our children receive the nutritious meals they need to thrive and are able to return to school ready to learn is a basic necessity for building an equitable and prosperous society,” said state Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, who is the chief executive of the academy. “For many of the children and youth we feed, the meal provided is the only one that some of them will get in a day.”

Julie Murray, president of Three Square, was pleased with the response of the community groups at the meeting.

“Here we are in the middle of the worst recession that I can recall and — I’m a lifelong Las Vegan — I’ve never before seen more Las Vegans step up to give a dollar, to donate their time to do a food drive or to help. It’s evidenced by the extra chairs we had to bring out today,” she said. “It’s been really encouraging to see the community come together, even though times are really, really difficult.”