Every day during the summer, Angela brings her two young grandchildren to the beautiful, newly-renovated downtown library in Roanoke. Not only can they read and play in a bright, safe space, but she knows they can eat a free, healthy lunch there, thanks to the city‘s summer meals program.
Her grandkids are among the hundreds of children who eat lunch every day at one of the five public libraries in this working-class city in southern Virginia. Lunch today is ham sandwiches, carrot sticks, baked potato chips and cartons of milk. Some of the boys from a nearby daycare center turned up their noses at the carrot sticks, but agreed to try them with some ranch dressing.
“Kids can‘t be hungry to learn if they‘re just plain hungry,” said Dorothy McAuliffe, the first lady of Virginia, who visited the Roanoke library to see the summer meals program in action.
McAuliffe is an outspoken champion of feeding kids in Virginia, and sees public libraries — safe, trusted, neighborhood spaces — as a powerful way to reach more children when school is out.
We agree with her. That’s why No Kid Hungry is working with state and local agencies to bring federally-funded summer meals programs to more of Virginia’s kids. Though the Roanoke library program is new, it’s already feeding 400 children every day, and there are 21 other libraries across the state doing the same.
“For some people, this really is a help,“ said Viney Holsey, who works for a child care center in Roanoke. Many of the children she cares for are from low-income families, and the summer months are especially difficult for them, so she brings them to the library, where she knows they’ll be able to eat a healthy meal in a safe, kid-friendly space.
In Virginia, like most states, only a fraction of the children who qualify for free and reduced-price lunches during the school year are getting summer meals. With your help, we’re changing that, in Virginia and across the country.
