Hunger in America: The summer sack lunch bus

Tough times these days. A record number of children - more than 1 in 4 - depend on government food assistance to get by. During the school year many schools offer subsidized lunches, sometimes breakfasts, and occasionally (in certain districts) sacks of canned food to take home over the weekends. But what about summer? For families living in poverty, parents can't afford to take the summer off work. Many kids are left to their own devices, stuck at home with an empty pantry and a growling stomach.

One food bank network in rural Tennessee has found an answer. They commissioned several former school buses and turned them into a sort of rolling summertime school lunch program. The buses travel from trailer park to trailer park, handing out sack lunches. The buses stop for 15 minutes each time because government regulations require (among other things) that the kids eat their lunches on the bus itself.

An example sack lunch is given in this article in the Washington Post: two ounces of celery sticks, four ounces of canned oranges, chocolate milk, and a baloney sandwich. 750 calories. For many kids, it was the first time they had eaten all day. For a substantial number of them, it would be the only significant meal they would have until the bus rolled around tomorrow.

This is a difficult article to read, as it should be. It's hard to believe that kids in America are living in this kind of poverty. (Like the seven year old whose teacher noted on her report card that she was "Easily distracted by other people eating.") But pretending it doesn't exist certainly won't help anyone. I don't know if this Tennessee bus system is the answer - it doesn't seem particularly scalable, for one thing - but it is definitely helping feed those kids, and sometimes you have to start small.

Image courtesy Flickr/Jeffrey Beall