Summer Food Programs – IRP Poverty Dispatch

In rural Tennessee, a new way to help hungry children: A bus turned bread truck, By Eli Saslow, July 6, 2013, Washington Post: “It was the first day of summer in a place where summers had become hazardous to a child’s health, so the school bus rolled out of the parking lot on its newest emergency route. It passed by the church steeples of downtown and curved into the blue hills of Appalachia. The highway became two lanes. The two lanes turned to red dirt and gravel. On the dashboard of the bus, the driver had posted an aphorism. ‘Hunger is hidden,’ it read, and this bus had been dispatched to find it…”
Some schools must scramble to feed low-income kids during summer, By Dalina Castellanos, July 4, 2013, Los Angeles Times: “Mylene Guzman walked her three daughters through the gate at Hollingworth Elementary School in West Covina straight to the cafeteria. The girls weren’t late to summer school classes, nor were they participating in any of the Rowland Unified School District’s theater or art programs. The trio were there for lunch — pizza and cherry-flavored applesauce. Rowland Unified is participating in the federal Summer Food Service Program, which allows Guzman, who lives within the district’s boundaries, to feed her daughters for free…”