“For some kids, I know this is their only dinner. But there’s no stigma, so the kids who really need it don’t get made fun of. A huge part of getting meals to kids who need them is giving them to everyone.” - Erin Collins, Whitney Library
When Erin Collins started working at the Whitney Library in 2011, she noticed something surprising.
Rather than briefly dropping by the library to browse and check out books, many kids stayed all day during the summer. Some showed up by themselves in the morning and left by themselves at closing time, well into the evening.
The pattern continued during the school year, with some kids arriving directly from school and leaving when the library closed. The library was their safe space while their parents worked, she realized.
Even more surprising was the fact that these children never left for lunch or snacks. Occasionally a child would ask the staff for food, leading Collins to assume that many more were silently hungry. Collins was aware that some children and families must struggle with hunger in this transient community – there are several nearby motels advertising weekly and monthly rates – but she felt powerless to help.
Then she saw an opportunity. With help from No Kid Hungry, Three Square Food Bank, one of the largest nonprofit sponsors of afterschool and summer meals in the Las Vegas area, agreed to provide meals over the summer. Once the library’s board approved having food in the library, kids could get lunch and an afternoon snack at no charge without having to leave the safety of the library (or its air conditioning).
For the past three years, the Whitney Library has also served afterschool meals Monday to Thursday. Because the national afterschool meals program requires sites to provide enrichment activities in order to serve meals, the Whitney Library offers tutoring. (The library's foundation pays for tutors through a local nonprofit that employs teachers as well as a program that employs college students.)
Most kids walk from a nearby elementary and middle school, plus a local high school has a bus stop to drop off students right in front of the library. When one little girl was asked her favorite part about visiting the library, she replied: “The snacks! The snacks! And the books.”
The library program offers a menu that includes sunbutter with whole-grain graham crackers, string cheese and salsa cups with whole-grain corn chips, and canned tuna with whole-grain crackers plus veggie juice, fruit cups, and shelf-stable milk boxes.
“The kids are in a total routine," said Collins. "At 3:30, they’ll start lining up. They’ll follow the cart as soon as I bring it out.”
Collins takes the time to write each child’s name on the bag and draw a smiley face. Writing each name has a practical purpose: if children leave behind their bags, the staff can gently remind them to throw them away. Just as important to Collins, it also gives her a moment to interact with each child and convey how much the staff cares about them. She thinks that the goodwill generated by these interactions as well as by the food itself has built a more positive environment. “Since we got the food, it’s helped us to manage behavior,” she noted.
For the 2018-2019 school year, they started off ordering forty snacks per day and served around thirty on the very first day of school. Soon those forty snacks were disappearing within twenty minutes. Within a few weeks of starting the school year, they were up to ordering sixty snacks per day. Less than a month into the school year, nearly all of those sixty get served within an hour. Collins loves that the kids don’t have to sign up in advance to get a meal, and she also loves that the meals are free for all of them.
