Free Meals Don’t End When School Is Out For Summer!

Food 4 Kids (F4K) operates as part of the Massachusetts Summer EATS program, our state’s branding for the federally funded USDA Summer Food Service Program (SFSP). The goal of Summer EATS/SFSP is to feed children and teens during the summer months when they do not have access to school meals. Unlike the USDA school year Free and Reduced-Price Meal program, all Summer EATS/SFSP meals are provided FREE to ALL children age 18 and under. No one has to qualify.

F4K was started as an outreach ministry of the Church of the Holy Spirit in 2013 by Ruth Campbell. That first summer F4K had partner sites in 3 towns: Chatham, Harwich and Truro. By the next summer we were in all 8 towns of the lower/outer Cape, from Harwich to Provincetown. By 2016 we were providing free meals to at least 15 different community programs. F4K is still the only Summer EATS/SFSP program serving all 8 towns on the lower/outer Cape.

We demonstrated our ability to adapt to challenging situations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of our community recreation partners could not operate. At the same time demand for meals rose sharply, beyond the capacity of our facilities at Holy Spirit. For the summer of 2020 we formed new partnerships with the Nauset and Monomoy School Systems, which provided the capacity to prepare enough meals for all 8 towns and the sites to distribute them. With decreased demand and some COVID rules relaxed in 2021, we moved to a “hybrid summer.” We returned to Holy Spirit to prepare meals and to most of our community recreation program partner sites to distribute them. Nauset Schools continued to provide free grab-and-go meals from the Middle School through the summer. And we continued to give away free books both summers!

Food 4 Kids completed its 10th summer in 2022 with more than 36,261 free meals, 30% more than the prior year. We also gave away a record 2,400 free books. We expect to meet, or even exceed those numbers for the summer 2023, because the need continues.