Thursday, June 6, 2013

No Child Should Go Hungry - Summer Food Programs



School is officially out for summer in Sevier County and most of our children are looking forward to the break from school. There are some kids that aren't though.

In Sevier County schools 62% of children received free or reduced lunch this year. For some of these children, the meals they received at school are the only ones they would have all day. Now that school is out, will these children go hungry?

That is the question that haunted me Friday.
Will they go hungry?
So I began to research and found several food programs
in our area as well as surrounding areas.

Summer Food Programs

Sevier County

The Boys & Girls Clubs will be serving FREE breakfast and lunch 
for children under the age of 18 at all 5 of their locations. 
Breakfast is served from 8:30 to 9:30am 
and lunch is served from 11am to 1pm.
Children do not have to be enrolled
and no paperwork is necessary.

Here are the locations:

Gatlinburg Branch
146 Proffitt Rd
Gatlinburg, TN  37738
865-436-0833

Kodak Branch
4125 Douglas Dam Rd
Kodak, TN  37764
865-933-3718

Pigeon Forge Branch
225 Pine Mountain Rd
Pigeon Forge, TN  37863
865-774-0039

Sevierville Branch
209 McMahan
Sevierville, TN  37862
865-428-5437

Seymour Branch
122 Boyds Creek Highway
Seymour, TN  37865
865-577-1080

Knox County

The Knox County Community Action Commitee will be serving breakfast and lunch at 85 locations. You can find a listing of the summer food service sites here. Some sites are on a walk-in basis and others require registration. You can contact CAC by phone at 865-546-3500 for more information.

Blount County

At Eagleton Middle, Rockford Elementary, and Mary Blount schools they will be serving lunch on a walk-in basis all summer from 11am to 1pm. No registration or ID necessary.

Loudon County


Loudon County Schools also have a program. 
 You can find more by calling 865-458-5411, Ext. 1011.

Roane County

In Harriman, The Kitchen will be serving FREE lunch from 11am to 1pm beginning this week. It is located at 229 Carter St.

More Programs

Through the East Tennessee Human Resource Agency (ETHRA), several other counties in our region have summer lunch programs. They include: Anderson, Campbell, Claiborne, Cocke, Cumberland, Grainger, Greene, Jefferson, Roane, Scott, Sevier and Union counties.
For more information, contact Veronica Stephens at (865) 691-2551 ext.4229 
or by e-mail at vstephens@ethra.org.

I know there are many more organizations in our area that will be helping to feed children over the summer. These are the programs that I was able to find out about in just a few days. I am so thankful for the representatives from these organizations that  spoke to me and shared their resources.

Do you know of any other programs in our area?
If so please share them in the comments, or you can contact me here.

If you aren't from this area, are there programs like these in your area?

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...