On a summer day in South Lawndale, Elva Guervero brought her three children – Martin, 15, Ano, 10, and James, 8 – to LaVillita Park, where the Food Depository’s Lunch Bus stops every weekday.
In the summer months, the Lunch Bus distributes healthy meals and snacks to children and teens, making 12 stops every weekday throughout communities with elevated rates of food insecurity. The Lunch Bus stops at places that are well-known and convenient for families with kids, such as parks, libraries and churches. Lunch Bus meals provide vital nourishment for our youngest neighbors in the summer months.
While summer is a time of freedom, activity and warm weather for many children, for their parents, it can be a time of stress. During the school year, most schools provide breakfast and lunch for students. Free school meals are a tremendous resource for parents on a tight budget. But in the summer, they suddenly need to provide three meals a day for each child, a financial burden that can add up for families already struggling to make ends meet.
Guervero and her husband do their best to support their family of five on his income as a car mechanic. “If I worked too, I’d have to pay a babysitter, and all the money would be gone,” she said, as her children sat on the grass eating apple slices and yogurt. “But one paycheck isn’t enough.” For Guervero, the Lunch Bus provides a sense of security. “This is one less meal I have to provide at home,” she said.
In addition to the meals we distribute through our summer Lunch Buses, the Food Depository also provides breakfast, lunch and snacks to children at nearly 150 community sites, including the Hyde Park Neighborhood Club. Lyra Williams, their program and operations manager, estimates that 40 percent of the children in their summer camp rely on the food they receive there to supplement what’s available at home.
“Kids will run up and ask, ‘Do you have a second snack or breakfast?’ Kids have no shame asking for food if they’re hungry.”
Lyra Williams, Hyde Park Neighborhood Club program and operations manager
While some are simply endlessly hungry growing kids, Williams knows some of the families experience financial and food insecurity, which often intensifies in the summer.
“The food (the Food Depository) provides means everything. We’re a nonprofit and wouldn’t be able to provide meals on our own,” Williams said. “The food helps us, and it helps our families.”
Yolanda Morris, wife to the pastor at New Mount Calvary Baptist Church, realized the extent of her youngest neighbors’ need for food about 16 years ago, when she began making biscuits, eggs, and grits for churchgoers before Sunday services. After cooking these meals for a few months, she realized that the need for the food she was providing was greater than she had anticipated. “A lot of kids came, many without their families,” Morris said. “Some of them really depended on that meal.”
Today, what was once a weekly meal she would cook herself, has evolved into a full food pantry, in partnership with the Food Depository. Morris now runs the pantry, as well as New Mount Calvary’s summer camp for kids that she started. The camp hosts kids ages 2-17 six hours a day for eight weeks, and the Food Depository provides breakfast and lunch for each camper.
“We’re a small congregation. Fewer than 75 members. We have just enough for lights and gas,” Morris said. “We couldn’t do this without the Food Depository.”
The Food Depository and our partner organizations like New Mount Calvary work diligently to ensure that our youngest neighbors have access to nutritious food, and we are grateful to our donors, whose support makes it possible for us to help end hunger in our communities.
While the summer months are crucial, the Food Depository ensures children have enough to eat year-round, partnering with more than 50 after-school program operators to provide meals to thousands of students, and groceries to families with children and college students at campus-based food pantries. Additionally, our network of pantries, soup kitchens, shelters and other meal programs reaches many households with children.
In addition to meeting our youngest neighbors’ immediate needs for food, the Food Depository also works to ensure that legislation gets passed to support their future food security. This year, advocates from the Food Depository traveled to Springfield to lobby for funding for Breakfast After the Bell, a bill that aims to provide more students free breakfast options, ensuring that more children receive the all-important first meal of the day, helping them learn, grow and thrive.
The Food Depository is committed to supporting the wellbeing children across our community. Thanks to our supporters, we are able to provide food for families experiencing food insecurity, offer programs that ensure children have enough to eat in the summer and advocate for youth across Chicago and Cook County. This work is crucial in ensuring that our youngest neighbors have the nourishment they need for successful futures.
