DENVER – For thousands of Colorado children, the joy of summer vacation may be overshadowed by the pangs of hunger.
Statewide, about 19,000 children received summer meals in 2013, according to a new Summer Nutrition Status Report by the Food Research and Action Center.
Compare that to almost 230,000 who receive free and reduced-price lunches during the school year, and that leaves people like Michelle Ray, director of communications for Hunger Free Colorado, concerned that many children in need aren’t receiving help in the summer.
“Summer should be a fun and enriching time for all Colorado kids, but for many it does represent a time when they’re at the greatest risk of hunger, and that’s due to lost access to school meals,” she says.
Colorado’s participation in Summer Nutrition Programs fell from 42nd to 43rd in the nation in 2013.
Colorado is among five states that have received extra technical assistance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help expand summer nutrition programs.
Signe Anderson, senior child nutrition policy analyst with FRAC, says one way to increase those numbers is greater school involvement during the summertime.
“During the economic downturn, a lot of schools shut their doors and no longer offered summer school,” she says. “And so, along with that, the summer meals disappeared.
“If there’s funding available for summer school or just summer programming in general, that would go a long way.”
Ray says a big focus for her organization is making sure children in rural areas have greater access to summer nutrition programs.
“And one of the things that we’ll be looking at is how can we reach the rural areas,” she says. “That seems to be one of the biggest gaps that we see, because there isn’t easy transportation to get to sites and to ensure that children can access the nutrition that they need.”
The FRAC report recommends more involvement from local municipalities, such as cities, parks and recreation departments, and local YMCAs and Boys & Girls Clubs.
