How meals in every Arkansas county are changing the lives of those who live there.
This summer I’ve had the pleasure of visiting several communities that are working hard to provide free meals to their kids. Last week at a small church just 40 minutes south of Little Rock, Arkansas, I met a woman named Heather.
She is a mom who had brought her three children along with a neighbor’s to the new site just five blocks from their house. I asked her what things had been like in previous summers, before the church began serving summer meals. She responded with a striking anecdote.
Heather told me about a day last summer when she decided to check on her neighbor’s daughter. It was late in the afternoon, and she knew that both of the girl’s parents were at work. When Heather arrived, she was shocked to find the eight-year-old girl attempting to cook her own lunch, with a huge pot of hot oil on the stove. Heather held her hand out pointer finger and thumb about four inches apart, explaining, “She was using that much oil.”
Fortunately, Heather got there in time to keep girl from getting seriously injured and before the house burned down. The kind of desperation that leads to this kind of experimentation is not uncommon for kids who get their meals at school during the rest of the year, and Heather’s neighbors rely on those meals to make sure their kids get the food they need. Instead of focusing their out of school energy on playing and making the kinds of summer memories many of us cherish, kids all over this country end up focusing their creativity on how they will get food.
For the last two months, The Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance - No Kid Hungry’s main partner in Arkansas - has been working ferociously to ensure that there are meals for kids in every county in the state – a first in Arkansas.
Thanks to the volunteers at Main Street Baptist Church, many more kids in the county will no longer have to worry about where their next meal will come from. And, as these programs expand, more and more Arkansas kids will be able to focus on just being kids during the summer months.
FOOTNOTES: Photos by Channing Johnson, story by Dan Roge. Thanks to our sponsor, The Arby's Foundation.
