The South Plains Food Bank provides nearly 800 free meals a day to students that have limited resources throughout the school year. But when class is out of session, the accessibility of these meals becomes limited, and SPFB has to depend on outside funds to be able to send meals home.
“During spring break it is nine days, so those kids are relying on meals from school that they aren’t going to have normally,” Children’s Feeding Program Director Susan Raines Luesse said. “Other times of the year we rely on grants for things like snack packs and private donations. We recently received funding to allow two schools to receive snack-packs for this spring break.”
Luesse said they were able to hand out and deliver 150 snack-packs that included items like spaghetti, animal crackers, fresh fruit and milk.
“We delivered a total of 150 packs. Each student got 2 boxes of food each totaling 25 pounds of food.”
Even though they were able to provide all those meals they’re always asking for more funding for additional students who weren’t able to receive snack-packs this break.
“The schools we sent students home with snack-packs are eligible to 80-90% free lunch.
We actually sent out 150 for spring break but they had kids who could have used more,” Luesse said.
This isn’t the only break they provide meals for; Luesse said they also help with Christmas and Thanksgiving as well.
“Child hunger is an epidemic, 1 in 4 kids on the South Plains are at risk for going to bed hungry. So we provide food for them for spring break, Christmas break and during Thanksgiving,” Luesse said.
All of their feeding sites during the school year and the summer are considered open sites. Anyone 18 and under can eat free meals, with no enrollment or registration needed. You can find their site locations and serving times by calling *211 or by visiting SPFB.org
